The Remediation of Fact-Checks on Social Media: Insights from a Multi-Platform Content Analysis

Abstract

The rise of social media has escalated the spread of misinformation, and the practice of fact-checking has become a key tool in the fight against it. Over time, the practice of fact-checking evolved and in recent years, fact-checking practices have shifted to social media platforms. However, social media’s unique logic requires fact-checkers to adapt—or “remediate” - their content to these platforms, which can prove to be challenging. Research is currently lacking on how fact-checks are remediated to this new format. This study examined how fact-checking organizations remediate their website fact-checks to different social media platforms, through an extensive content analysis (N = 14.891) of website and social media fact-checks published by eight fact-checking organizations (Belgium, the US, the UK). Results show that transfer rates from the website to social media are generally high, but that there are differences across organizations. Fact-checks are diffused to social media with an initial widespread burst across platforms but are often not re-shared after this. Reposting of content happens mostly within the platform, with reposts across platforms occurring less often. There is a prevalence of hard news topics both in website fact-checks as on social media, indicating no trend of news softening.