Fact-checking as a global strategy to fight against disinformation

Abstract

Fact-checking services are establishing a system of verification that must be evaluated in order to design future strategies to stop the spread of fake news. The aim of this article is to describe that process to deepen the understanding of dubious messages for citizens. To this end, 2,894 records from 2018 and 2019 from the Newtral database have been analysed in full. More specifically, the percentage of true and false content, the sources of dissemination and verification, the time spent on verification, and the topics of the verified messages were examined. The main findings point to the fact that there are more messages that are fraudulent than authentic, and that the media are the main source for the dissemination of dubious messages that were verified. Moreover, the findings also show that governments are the main source of verification, credibility prevails over immediacy in the fact-checking process, and politics is the topic that generates the most hoaxes.