Fighting Misperceptions and Doubting Journalists’ Objectivity: A Review of Fact-checking Literature

Abstract

Fact checkers evaluate the truthfulness of political claims appearing in public. The practice has increased enormously in recent years. This review analyses research concerning political fact-checking; it presents what kind of studies have been made about fact-checking and introduces their main findings. Most of the literature focuses either on fact-checking as a profession or on its corrective potential. Research about the effectiveness of fact-checking offers mixed results: some find that fact-checking reduces misperceptions, others that corrections are often ineffective. It is also disputed whether fact checkers are consistent in their conclusions and whether their methods are reliable. Moreover, the literature is overwhelmingly focused in the US context.

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