When Fact-Checking Is Not WEIRD: Negotiating Consensus Outside Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic Countries

Abstract

This study unpacks the emerging framework of detection, verification, and correction of falsehoods developed by fact-checkers outside Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic countries. We explore a series of semistructured interviews carried out in several languages with thirty-seven fact-checking experts from thirty-five organizations in twenty-seven countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Our findings emphasize the contextual nature of the falsehoods that these professionals deal with on a daily basis, and the many strategies they employ to navigate cultural and political obstacles while strengthening social cohesion locally. We review these findings against the literature in the area and argue that the prevailing framework of fact-checking, where misinformation and disinformation are reduced to individual and behavioral problems, underplays the social and historical dimensions driving disinformation and propaganda.