Call for Abstracts

The Global Fact-Checking Movement: Regional, Comparative, Organizational, and Institutional Perspectives

Over the last decade, the fact-checking field grew from a few dozen outlets based mainly in the United States and Europe, to include some 380 organizations active in more than 100 countries, with about half in the Global South. Fact-checkers have built a cohesive and coherent global movement, with its own annual conference, professional association, standards bodies, and growing ties to platform companies as well as public institutions. Recent collaborations such as #UkraineFact and #CoronaVirusFacts have involved fact-checkers in dozens of countries working together to track and counteract global misinformation flows.

Even as fact-checkers increasingly act together, their movement remains strikingly diverse. It spans professional newsrooms as well as community-based groups, private commercial services as well as sites run by student volunteers, and small local outlets as well as global media giants operating in dozens of countries. Crucially, fact-checkers work in a wide variety of media and political systems. Even when practices converge, they understand their own mission — and the wider problem of misinformation — in very different ways. 

This pre-conference brings together scholars who study fact-checking organizations, practices, and institutions around the world. We welcome research with a regional or comparative focus, as well as studies of the wider global movement. The last several years have seen growing attention to how fact-checkers work in different environments — particularly across Africa, Asia, and Latin America — and to organizational diversity and change in the field as a whole. Scholars have also focused increasingly on fact-checkers’ relationships with platform companies, policymakers, transnational institutions, and other actors involved in counter-misinformation campaigns.

Potential themes include but are not limited to:

• practices, methods, and epistemologies of fact-checking
• organizational forms and organizational change in the field
• convergence or divergence of verification practices
• self-understanding/role perceptions among fact-checkers
• funding sources, revenue models, sustainability issues
• fact-checking in diverse media & political systems
• fact-checking in populist and/or authoritarian contexts
• trust in fact-checking organizations by audiences or institutions
• fact-checking associations, meta-organizations, and self-governance (e.g IFCN)
• standardization and professionalization (e.g. Code of Principles)
• regional or global collaborations (e.g. #CoronaVirusFacts, #UkraineFacts)
• platform partnerships, platform affordances, and platform economics
• commercialization and commercial fact-checking services
• fact-checking by global news agencies
• intermedia agenda-setting between fact-checkers and other media
• partisan or cause-linked fact-checking
• fake fact-checking sites
• legal, political, or other threats against fact-checkers
• safety, security, and care in fact-checking work
• media literacy initiatives and the fact-checking movement
• technological advances and innovations
• political discourses and policy debates about fact-checking
• governmental/legal regulation of fact-checking

Submission guidelines

Participants should submit an extended abstract of one to two pages (roughly 400-800 words, including references) outlining a proposed paper or presentation. Contributions may take different forms — an empirical study, a theoretical or conceptual argument, a case study, etc. — but in every case the abstract should state clearly what the proposed contribution adds to our understanding and why it matters. Participants will be invited to develop their contributions for a peer-reviewed edited volume to be published in 2024. 

Please submit abstracts by January 20 to globalfactchecking@gmail.com