| Abstract: | After more than a decade of rapid growth, the worldwide fact-checking movement has surged since 2016, fuelled by rising concern about the political and social influence of online misinformation. This movement is also changing in ways that deserve close attention, as understanding and mitigating the spread of false information across digital networks has become an urgent priority for governments, charitable foundations, academic researchers, and technology companies. This research brief presents a snapshot of the field based on a mid-2019 survey designed to reveal how fact-checking organisations understood their mission, where they were directing their resources, and how their focus had shifted in the last several years. We found evidence of diverging missions in the fact-checking world, as a focus on combatting online misinformation began to supersede one on checking rhetoric from public figures. |
