ARIJ Amman, Jordan December, 2014 Ed Bice, Meedan

Social Media Fact-Checking

What is checkdesk?Checkdesk is an open source application that enables participatory investigative journalism for professional

newsrooms and citizen journalists

With the rapid advent of real-time, mobile citizen publishing traditional newsrooms are struggling to find a balance between engaging with these real-time conversations and doing ‘serious’ journalism. !!Checkdesk is designed to address this problem. !

Social verification

Why check social media?Checkdesk enables our media partners to work collaboratively with

networks of citizen journalists to curate, fact-check, and contextualize social media content.

Why check social media?1. The stories journalists build and follow over time are increasingly

breaking and changing over time through social media !2. The person on the street has always been a part of investigative

journalism. Now, they are the person on the street and on Twitter/FB/Instagram/Skype, etc

!3. Investigative Journalism as the practice of finding sources with

information relevant to the story must view the social web as a critical resource for discovering, engaging with, validating and documenting

Checkdesk Architecture

Collections of updates

One or more reports

fact-checked URLs

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❶

❷

❸

❶ ✅

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story update report

Stories A group of journalist form a story team. They initially create a simple headline and short description and can add an optional story image.

A journalist on the story team can add an update to breaking events updates are composed with embedded, fact-checked reports

Updates

Each story update is numbered, timestamped and attributed to the publishing journalist

Reports

Journalists can view the details related to the report submitted to the system related to questions the citizen journalist has or context relevant to the link

Journalist can view, and filter, a page that displays all of the incoming reports

Fact-checking

Inspired by the Git changelog showing revisions in software development, the checklog shows a timestamped list of the journalists’ fact-checking

Each status - false, in progress, or verified - is set by the journalist and visible to the reader

Arab Citizen Media

Next? Well, I am pleased to announce today the launch of the Checkdesk Investigative Social Journalism award. !Starting January 1, we will be opening up meedan.Checkdesk.org and all of our partner sites to submissions from aspiring journalists from across the MENA. Each month we will make cash awards for the most outstanding investigative reporting submitted through Checkdesk. So, let’s all start fact-checking. !Many and deep thanks to the our sponsors and partners, Birmingham City University, Welad El Balad, Bellingcat, Global Voices, Mada Masr, SMEX, International Press Institute, google.org, Knight Foundation, Arab Partnerships, and Sida

fact checking trainingOne hour exercise

!1. Break into Groups of maximum 5 people 2. Choose a report to fact-check (reports shown on next slide) 3. Work with your group for 20 minutes to develop and document a

fact-checking process or approach you propose to take 4. If possible conduct an initial investigation using your team’s

identified process 5. Call on Eliot, Craig, or Ed to feedback on the process during this

working time

fact checking training #1

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/03/woman-detained-lebanon-not-isis-leaders-wife-iraq

fact checking training #2

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11267182/Wife-and-son-of-Isil-leader-Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi-

detained-at-Lebanon-border.html

fact checking training #3

Co-­‐ords  -­‐  47.136300,  38.121666  Files  -­‐  h7p://bit.ly/1zN30k3