Selection criteria for claims

When selecting materials and creating articles, we are guided by the following criteria and principles for constructing material for each of the formats.

Fact-check 

Format’s subject: media material or public statement of official person that includes a factual claim.
Selection criteria: the claim/statement must be verifiable and the claim itself has to be factual,concrete, and connected with objective measurable reality. In addition, the journalist must be able to verify claims using only open data and available resources; public resonance (the significance of the claim for society, the impact of the sounded fact on the life of society and its individual members); and retransmission level (the number of citations and references in the media). It is important to note that timeliness (the statute of limitations) is not one of the main criteria, since information distorted in the past can have consequences and become actual in the present

Debunking format

Format’s subject: existing (established) in society and regularly reproduced narrative. This narrative can concern a social group, a phenomenon of reality, established opinions about controversial historical facts, difficult to explain facts of reality, local mythologems, etc.
Selection criteria: retransmission level, public resonance, fundamental verifiability (in particular cases — by setting up an experiment).

Promise tracking

Format’s subject: promises given by public persons. Within this format, a promise means an assertion about an event in the future, to which a public person can influence directly by virtue of his official position. The event must have measurable indicators that are published in open access. There is also an additional parameter — deadline — if a public person does not name a certain date for promise, the term of execution means the date of termination of the official’s authority.
Selection criteria: fundamental verifiability, public resonance. Retransmission level is not a key criteria in the format of promise tracking because a fact of public statement about the intention to perform something is more important for the promise of a public person than the retransmission level of this statement.

Propaganda deconstruction

Format’s subject: propaganda narratives in media, public discourse and in the statements of public persons. Fakes and digital pranks can also be the subject of propaganda deconstruction if they include propaganda ideas or narratives. It is important to note that the objective of format is not to verify the authenticity of the information or to check for the presence/absence of propaganda narrative, but to explain the principles of designing this narrative and its influence on the public consciousness. Thereby, the fake can first become a subject for fact-check, which will prove its invalidity, and then the same fake can become a subject for the propaganda deconstruction if the objective of journalistic material is to explain how this narrative worked on and influenced the public.
Selection criteria: retransmission level, public resonance. Criteria of fundamental verifiability is not the key criteria because the objective of journalist material in the format of propaganda deconstruction is not to verify the authenticity of the information but to explain the influence of the propaganda on the public.

The whole description of the formats you can read in article by Pavel Bannikov and Tasha Sokolova here or on Academia.edu.

Share
Factcheck.kz