Stop Fake is one website trying to fact-check what is going on in Ukraine (Image: Supplied)

The invasion of Ukraine has triggered an evolution in so-called fact-checking. Once a journalistic exercise in pointing out political lies, it is now a whole online movement, focused on discrediting and removing all misinformation from the internet — a mammoth task. 

As misinformation about the invasion floods social media accounts, everyone from international papers and citizen journalists have joined the fight. But does it work?

Countering social media falsehoods

The social media giants have given a huge platform to misinformation in recent years. Twitter’s record on allowing misinformation to be published is particularly bad. Its “trust and safety” team usually only flags high-profile examples of misinformation (like some of Donald Trump’s tweets), but it has limited resources dedicated to the more insidious forms of mistruths which lurk in the less exposed corners of the platform. They announced a fact-check tool called Birdwatch last year, which would allow users to flag and discredit misinformation. But it’s currently only available in the US, and reports suggest it hasn’t gained any traction.

While Facebook has gone further, the enormity of the platform means it still allows misinformation to thrive. NewsGuard, a group that tracks online misinformation, was highly critical of Facebook’s efforts to limit anti-vaccine sentiment on the platform. Crikey’s Cam Wilson reported earlier this week how Facebook approved a number of clearly fake federal election ads. Facebook does have a large group of external fact-checkers who are dedicated to removing misinformation, providing labels to falsified content, but it’s not enough to stop lies spreading. 

Traditional media organisations have taken a large amount of fact-checking into their own hands, including Crikey, which tracked the Lies and Falsehoods of Prime Minister Scott Morrison last year. US media organisations undertook a mammoth fact-checking task during the Trump administration, with The Washington Post keeping track of more than 30,000 lies or misleading statements made by the former president. But Trump continued and continues to lie, as does Morrison. And fake videos, as well as out-of-context images and straight-up lies, continue to flood social media accounts. Once a lie is out there, it’s difficult to wind it back.

Can fact-checking save the day?

The answer is yes — if done well. Studies have demonstrated how well-executed fact-checking has a “significantly positive overall influence on political beliefs”. The Debunking Handbook, compiled by a contingent of universities including MIT, Cambridge and ANU, outlined a few of the key features of effective fact-checking. These include attempts at “inoculation”; to educate users on how to identify misinformation, and employ systems to prevent untruths from ever being posted. In lieu of this, false or misleading content should be debunked as quickly as possible. Refutations are crucial, and must outline “why the information is false and what is true instead”. This provides the best opportunity to “unstick” misinformation. 

So fact-checking can work, but it can’t be half-arsed. Huge resources and commitment are required to both preemptively stop lies and to debunk them when they emerge. And for now, despite social media claims that they are doing all they can, there is plenty more they could do to ensure users are aware a post has been debunked. A start would be to increase the resources they commit to the task. Despite the media’s best efforts, fact-checking at the source, in most cases on social media, is crucial to stopping misinformation in its tracks.