The fact checking field has grown tremendously in the past decade, as has academic interest in the practice, with dozens of studies testing the effectiveness of corrections. However, research on fact checking is not yet optimised to help fact checkers address the global challenges of mis‐ and disinformation. In this paper, we review the literature on fact checking’s effects and identify two key gaps. First, we discuss the limited diversity and external validity of existing studies, which have overwhelmingly been conducted in Western countries and under artificial, experimental conditions. Second, we argue that research has narrowly focussed on the short‐term, corrective effects of individual fact checks, largely ignoring the multiple ways fact checkers conceive of their impact. Thus, research has overlooked the cultural and systemic changes that fact checkers pursue. We conclude by highlighting opportunities for further research and for improving communication between academics and fact checkers.

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.

This article explores how the UK’s fact‐checking organisation Full Fact has sought to tackle misinformation since its inception in 2010. Full Fact describes itself as a ‘second generation’ fact‐checking organisation with dual aims of seeking to stop the spread of specific pieces of inaccurate information and using the evidence base from fact checking to secure systemic changes that help make misinformation rarer and less harmful. Ultimately, we are pursuing culture change. We are trying to create institutions in societies that can help anchor public debate to reality and to challenge the casual acceptance of deceptive and misleading behaviour.

The UK is a fortunate country with high levels of education, well-developed public and civil society institutions, and some highly trusted media. Nevertheless, there is evidence that the public is substantially misinformed on key issues of public debate, and leading figures have pointed to consistent issues involving the inaccurate use of facts in public debate. Full Fact is the UK’s independent, nonpartisan, factchecking charity. We aim to stop the spread of specific bits of inaccurate information and to secure systemic changes that help make misinformation rarer and less harmful. In this piece we discuss the state of misinformation and disinformation in the UK, the role that we think factchecking has in tackling it, and the research we are eager to learn from to inform our work.

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