Fact-checking organizations and trust: analysis of their relationships with sources and audiences
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62008/ixc/14/02PlatafKeywords:
trust, sources of information, audience, fact-checking, organizations, disinformationAbstract
Trust is a basic aspect in the daily work of fact-checking organizations. This value underpins the relationships they maintain with two key actors in the journalistic process: news sources and audiences. Based on the discourses of trust (Manninen, 2017) and participatory transparency (Karlsson, 2010), the aim of this study is to analyse the relationships established between independent fact-checking platforms and their sources, on the one hand, and their audiences, on the other. To this end, a qualitative content analysis of the websites of 18 initiatives from 18 countries and six in-depth interviews with editors and/or journalists from six of the projects analysed were carried out. Among the results obtained, it is observed that the organizations make a pragmatic discourse of trust in the use of sources, with official and expert sources being the most widely used. They also place a high level of trust in their audience, which they bring into the journalistic production process, and they implement numerous media literacy actions, a line of work with high potential.
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