News Story

Why does fact checking matter? @ImagineBelfast

Harith Alani, Monday 15 Apr 2019

KMi was invited to present the Co-Infom project at the event "Why does fact checking matter?" which was organised by FactCheckNI as part of the Imagine! Festival in Belfast. The event focused on the importance of fact checking from the perspectives of fact checkers, data scientists, journalists, and academics.

The panellists in the event were Allan Leonard (Editor, FactCheckNI), Harith Alani (Professor of Web Sciences, Open University), Linda Keys (Data Scientist, NISRA), and Kathleen Carragher (former Head of Content, BBC NI).

Harith Alani, the Co-Inform PI from KMi, described how Co-Infom is addressing the gap between the work produced by the fact checking organisations, and the social media platforms where misinformation is circulating. He showed real examples of how misinforming articles, and their corresponding fact-check articles, are shared on Twitter, to highlight their different patterns and to demonstrate the need for socio-technical interventions.

Harith also demonstrated the Co-Inform MisinfoMe tool produced by the Co-Inform KMi team (developed by Martino Mensio), to help people raise their awareness of how they, their friends, and others, have been interacting with misinformation on social media, and how they compare to the average user.

An edited video of the event is available, which was created by Alan Meban (Chair, FactCheckNI Advisory Group).