Slides from a presentation given as part of a Social Media Verification workshop at the ARIJ07 conference in Amman, Jordan Dec. 4-5 2014, with Eliot Higgins and Craig Silverman. Post on this here: https://medium.com/meedan-updates/verified-i-attended-arij07-last-month-in-amman-jordan-met-400-committed-arab-region-investigative-333f5afed8cd

1. ARIJ
Amman, Jordan
December, 2014
Ed Bice, Meedan
Social Media Fact-Checking

2. What is checkdesk?
Checkdesk is an open source application that enables
participatory investigative journalism for professional
newsrooms and citizen journalists

3. With the rapid advent of real-time,
mobile citizen publishing traditional
newsrooms are struggling to find a
balance between engaging with
these real-time conversations and
doing ‘serious’ journalism. !
!
Checkdesk is designed to address
this problem.
!
Social verification

4. Why check social media?
Checkdesk enables our media partners to work collaboratively with
networks of citizen journalists to curate, fact-check, and
contextualize social media content.

5. Why check social media?
1. The stories journalists build and follow over time are increasingly
breaking and changing over time through social media
!
2. The person on the street has always been a part of investigative
journalism. Now, they are the person on the street and on Twitter/
FB/Instagram/Skype, etc
!
3. Investigative Journalism as the practice of finding sources with
information relevant to the story must view the social web as a
critical resource for discovering, engaging with, validating and
documenting

6. Checkdesk Architecture
Collections of updates
One or more reports
fact-checked URLs
✅
❶
❷
❸
❶
✅
❌
story update report

7. Stories
A group of
journalist form a
story team.
They initially
create a simple
headline and
short
description and
can add an
optional story
image.

8. A journalist on
the story team
can add an
update to
breaking events
updates are
composed with
embedded, fact-
checked reports
Updates
Each story
update is
numbered,
timestamped
and attributed
to the
publishing
journalist

9. Reports
Journalists can view
the details related to
the report submitted
to the system
related to questions
the citizen journalist
has or context
relevant to the link
Journalist
can view, and
filter, a page
that displays
all of the
incoming
reports

10. Fact-checking
Inspired by the Git
changelog showing
revisions in software
development, the
checklog shows a
timestamped list of
the journalists’ fact-
checking
Each status
- false, in
progress, or
verified - is
set by the
journalist
and visible
to the reader

11. Arab Citizen Media

12. Next? Well, I am pleased to announce today the
launch of the Checkdesk Investigative Social
Journalism award.
!
Starting January 1, we will be opening up
meedan.Checkdesk.org and all of our partner
sites to submissions from aspiring journalists
from across the MENA. Each month we will
make cash awards for the most outstanding
investigative reporting submitted through
Checkdesk. So, let’s all start fact-checking.
!
Many and deep thanks to the our sponsors and
partners, Birmingham City University, Welad El
Balad, Bellingcat, Global Voices, Mada Masr,
SMEX, International Press Institute, google.org,
Knight Foundation, Arab Partnerships, and Sida

22. fact checking training
One hour exercise
!
1. Break into Groups of maximum 5 people
2. Choose a report to fact-check (reports shown on next slide)
3. Work with your group for 20 minutes to develop and document a
fact-checking process or approach you propose to take
4. If possible conduct an initial investigation using your team’s
identified process
5. Call on Eliot, Craig, or Ed to feedback on the process during this
working time

23. fact checking training #1
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/03/woman-
detained-lebanon-not-isis-leaders-wife-iraq

24. fact checking training #2
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/
11267182/Wife-and-son-of-Isil-leader-Abu-Bakr-al-Baghdadi-
detained-at-Lebanon-border.html

25. fact checking training #3
Co-­‐ords
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47.136300,
38.121666
Files
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h7p://bit.ly/1zN30k3