Fact Checking and Information in the Age of Covid

Seaton, J., Sippitt, A. and Worthy, B. 2020. Fact Checking and Information in the Age of Covid. Political Quarterly. 91 (3), pp. 578-584. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12910

TitleFact Checking and Information in the Age of Covid
TypeJournal article
AuthorsSeaton, J., Sippitt, A. and Worthy, B.
Abstract

The Covid‐19 pandemic has revealed and accelerated an information crisis as well as a health one. What we discover about Covid 19, how it spreads, to whom and why and how best to mitigate it—all depend on information. The essays in this special section, which this article introduces, explore the importance of information and the fundamental role of fact checkers in understanding how information flows, why mistakes are made, and how to counteract them. Fact checking as an idea and a practice emerged in the early twenty‐first century, developed as a positive beacon to counteract a growing sense that information could no longer be trusted. Now, more than a decade after its creation, fact checking sits within a far more complex and chaotic media context, and its expertise and understanding has never been so important. We need to understand what fact checkers do because they are grappling with how to tether us to reality.

JournalPolitical Quarterly
Journal citation91 (3), pp. 578-584
ISSN1467-923X
Year2020
PublisherWiley
Accepted author manuscript
License
CC BY 4.0
File Access Level
Open (open metadata and files)
Publisher's version
License
CC BY 4.0
File Access Level
Open (open metadata and files)
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12910
Web address (URL)https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-923X.12910
Publication dates
Published online04 Sep 2020
Published in printSep 2020
Supplemental file
License
CC BY 4.0
File Access Level
Open (open metadata and files)

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