Fact-Checking, a Public Service Value in the Face of the Hoaxes of the Healthcare Crisis

Abstract

The dissemination of fake news is an increasing issue in the media ecosys­tem, which has worsened with the current healthcare crisis. Pandemic-re­lated hoaxes challenge media, which have not hesitated to implement dif­ferent plans to combat these contents. The objective of this research is to ana­lyse the structure, make-up and proce­dures of fact-checking units that have been created in the newsrooms of the public service media (PSM) in Spain to refute false and unreliable information related to coronavirus. Two initiatives were studied: RTVE Verifica, belonging to the Spanish Radio and Television Corporation, and Coronabulos, from the public entity of the Basque govern­ment, EiTB. The method used is based on case studies, web content analysis and in-depth semi-structured inter­views with those responsible for these departments. Such a triangulation of techniques has allowed us to draw conclusions and provide interesting ex­amples to the research. The results re­veal that these sections use traditional techniques and technological applica­tions to verify content related mainly to healthcare and pseudoscientific infor­mation, which are published on corpo­rate websites and social media. Keywords: hoaxes, coronavirus, healthcare crisis, fact-checking, public service media.

Spanish Fact-Checking Services: An Approach to Their Business Models

“…There has been a higher amount of academic literature about fact-checking in the past five years, encouraged by the expansion of these services. This issue has been treated from different perspectives: mainly, how the media and information agencies have incorporated verification techniques [8,[26][27][28][29], the commitment of verification to journalistic quality, and the fight against disinformation [11,30], the analysis of the verification of fake news in the field of politics [5,31,32], and the combating of COVID-19 fake news through factchecking [33][34][35][36][37]. In the case of Spain, studies have mainly focused on the analysis of the work procedures followed by the verification platforms associated with the communication or independent media that have emerged in recent years [13,[38][39][40].…”

Hoax behavior tendencies among Indonesian students: An analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Hoaxes that cause various physical and mental health problems can be found on social media [55], [63], [97]. Such news creates collective panic or fear [48], [95] and leads to behaviors [71] , that vary according to internal stimuli, including knowledge, attitudes, facilities, experience, culture, society, and beliefs. Table 2 shows the contribution of each sub-variable.…”