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83-397: The Congressional Leadership Fund ( CLF ) is a Super PAC dedicated to electing Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives . The Super PAC, which was closely linked to former House Speaker John Boehner and House GOP leadership, was founded in 2011 and spent nearly $ 10 million in the 2012 cycle electing Republican candidates. Following Boehner's resignation from the U.S. Congress and

166-409: A " backfire effect " whereby correcting false information may make partisan individuals cling more strongly to their views. One study found evidence of such a " backfire effect ", but several other studies did not. A 2015 experimental study found that fact-checking can encourage politicians to not spread misinformation . The study found that it might help improve political discourse by increasing

249-542: A $ 300 fine along with an $ 85 court fee. According to records from the Federal Elections Commission, as of June 6, 2017, Congressional Leadership Fund had made independent expenditures totaling just over $ 2.94 million in the Georgia 6th Congressional District Special Election against Democrat Jon Ossoff . CLF pledged $ 6.5 million to the special election in an attempt to keep the seat in control of

332-571: A Harvard Law degree as a foul-mouthed and "disturbingly radical" rapper, and misrepresented lyrics from his rap career. CLF obtained the unredacted security clearance application of Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer and Democratic congressional candidate, and then used it for political purposes. CLF also sent the highly sensitive document to at least one media outlet. CLF then ran ads trying to link Spanberger to terrorist activity. Both Delgado and Spanberger went on to defeat incumbent Republicans for their respective House seats on November 6, 2018. In

415-576: A Harvard Law degree, as a foul-mouthed and "disturbingly radical" rapper, and misrepresented lyrics from his rap career. As of April 2019 the Congressional Leadership Fund does not list its leadership on its official website. The board members are all members of the board of the American Action Network. The Super PAC is currently headed by Daniel Conston, who serves as executive director to both CLF and

498-421: A candidate's former staff or associates. In the 2012 election campaign, most of the money given to super PACs came from wealthy individuals, not corporations. According to data from OpenSecrets , the top 100 individual super PAC donors in 2011–2012 made up just 3.7% of contributors, but accounted for more than 80% of the total money raised, while less than 0.5% of the money given to "the most active super PACs"

581-485: A control without tags , but only modestly". A Dartmouth study led by Brendan Nyhan found that Facebook tags had a greater impact than the Yale study found. A "disputed" tag on a false headline reduced the number of respondents who considered the headline accurate from 29% to 19%, whereas a "rated false" tag pushed the number down to 16%. A 2019 study found that the "disputed" tag reduced Facebook users' intentions to share

664-487: A copy of the sensitive information to at least one news outlet. In The Guardian ' s ranking of the five most bigoted ads during the 2018 election campaign, four of the five were ads by the CLF. During the 2018 mid-term elections. CLF produced a number of false ads, including two that falsely linked two Democratic candidates with terrorists. In one ad, the CLF depicted Antonio Delgado , an African-American Rhodes scholar with

747-815: A desire to appear objective". The term "fact-check" is also appropriated and overused by "partisan sites", which may lead people to "disregard fact-checking as a meaningless, motivated exercise if all content is claimed to be fact-checked". Fact-checking journalists have been harassed online and offline, ranging from hate mail and death threats to police intimidation and lawfare . Operators of some fact-checking websites in China admit to self-censorship . Fact-checking websites in China often avoid commenting on political, economic, and other current affairs. Several Chinese fact-checking websites have been criticized for lack of transparency with regard to their methodology and sources, and for following Chinese propaganda . Among

830-455: A fact-check about a false anti-abortion claim after receiving pressure from Republican senators. In 2022 and 2023, many social media platforms such as Meta, YouTube and Twitter have significantly reduced resources in Trust and safety , including fact-checking. Twitter under Elon Musk has severely limited access by academic researchers to Twitter's API by replacing previously free access with

913-418: A fake news story next to the fake news story link whenever it is shared on Facebook. Based on the findings of a 2017 study in the journal Psychological Science, the most effective ways to reduce misinformation through corrections is by: Large studies by Ethan Porter and Thomas J. Wood found that misinformation propagated by Donald Trump was more difficult to dispel with the same techniques, and generated

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996-538: A fake news story. The Yale study found evidence of a backfire effect among Trump supporters younger than 26 years whereby the presence of both untagged and tagged fake articles made the untagged fake articles appear more accurate. In response to research which questioned the effectiveness of the Facebook "disputed" tags, Facebook decided to drop the tags in December 2017 and would instead put articles which fact-checked

1079-470: A greater impact on reducing support for a politician than fact-checking of individual statements made by the politician. Individual readers perform some types of fact-checking, such as comparing claims in one news story against claims in another. Rabbi Moshe Benovitz, has observed that: "modern students use their wireless worlds to augment skepticism and to reject dogma." He says this has positive implications for values development: Fact-checking can become

1162-451: A joke that there's no coordination between these individual super PACs and the candidates." As of mid-2015, despite receiving 29 complaints about coordination between campaigns and super PACs, "FEC has yet to open an investigation". According to Open Secrets, in the 2019–2020 cycle (as of October 29, 2022) 2,415 groups organized as super PACs; they had reported total receipts of a little over $ 2.5 billion and total independent expenditures of

1245-507: A large catalog of historical news sources with their veracity scores to encourage other researchers to explore and develop new methods and technologies for detecting fake news. In 2022, researchers have also demonstrated the feasibility of falsity scores for popular and official figures by developing such for over 800 contemporary elites on Twitter as well as associated exposure scores. There are also demonstrations of platform-built-in (by-design) as well browser -integrated (currently in

1328-464: A learned skill, and technology can be harnessed in a way that makes it second nature... By finding opportunities to integrate technology into learning, students will automatically sense the beautiful blending of… their cyber… [and non-virtual worlds]. Instead of two spheres coexisting uneasily and warily orbiting one another, there is a valuable experience of synthesis.... According to Queen's University Belfast researcher Jennifer Rose, because fake news

1411-409: A little under $ 1.3 billion. In the 2024 election cycle, there were 2,458 Super PACs that raised $ 4,290,768,955 and spent $ 2,727,234,077. Because super PACs were able to coordinate with campaigns on canvassing for the first time, Donald Trump 's campaign relied on Elon Musk 's America PAC , a super PAC, to lead his get-out-the-vote efforts in swing states. Fact-checking Fact-checking

1494-595: A loss of third party tools often used for content moderation, and the difficulty for academic researchers to access Reddit data. Many fact-checkers rely heavily on social media platform partnerships for funding, technology and distributing their fact-checks. Commentators have also shared concerns about the use of false equivalence as an argument in political fact-checking, citing examples from The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Associated Press where "mainstream fact-checkers appear to have attempted to manufacture false claims from progressive politicians...[out of]

1577-420: A non-partisan neutral source such as PolitiFact . A 2022 study found that individuals exposed to a fact-check of a false statement by a far-right politician were less likely to share the false statement. Some studies have found that exposure to fact-checks had durable effects on reducing misperceptions, whereas other studies have found no effects. Scholars have debated whether fact-checking could lead to

1660-717: A potential step to a solution, the authors suggest the need of a "scientific community" to establish falsifiable theories , "which in turn makes sense of the facts", noting the difficulty that this step would face in the digital media landscape of the Internet. Social media platforms – Facebook in particular – have been accused by journalists and academics of undermining fact-checkers by providing them with little assistance; including "propagandist-linked organizations" such as CheckYourFact as partners; promoting outlets that have shared false information such as Breitbart and The Daily Caller on Facebook's newsfeed ; and removing

1743-399: A salient threat." Fact checking may also encourage some politicians to engage in "strategic ambiguity" in their statements, which "may impede the fact-checking movement's goals." One experimental study found that fact-checking during debates affected viewers' assessment of the candidates' debate performance and "greater willingness to vote for a candidate when the fact-check indicates that

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1826-502: A staff writer covering lobbying and influence for CQ Roll Call , "made the first identifiable, published reference to 'super PAC' as it's known today while working at National Journal , writing on June 26, 2010, of a group called Workers' Voices, that it was a kind of "'super PAC' that could become increasingly popular in the post-Citizens United world." According to FEC advisories , super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates or political parties. This restriction

1909-472: A subscription that starts at $ 42,000 per month, and by denying requests for access under the Digital Services Act . After the 2023 Reddit API changes , journalists, researchers and former Reddit moderators have expressed concerns about the spread of harmful misinformation, a relative lack of subject matter expertise from replacement mods, a vetting process of replacement mods seen as haphazard,

1992-551: Is a monolith." David Spiegelhalter , the Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University , argued that "behind closed doors, scientists spend the whole time arguing and deeply disagreeing on some fairly fundamental things". Clarke further argued that "The binary idea that scientific assertions are either correct or incorrect has fed into the divisiveness that has characterised

2075-770: Is already illegal, since it would constitute a contribution in the name of another. A "pop-up" super PAC is one that is formed within 20 days before an election, so that its first finance disclosures will be filed after the election. In 2018 the Center for Public Integrity recorded 44 pop-up super PACs formed on October 18 or later, a year when the Federal Election Commission pre-general election reports covered activity through October 17. In 2020 there were more than 50. Pop-up super PACs often have local-sounding or issue-oriented names. However they can be funded by much larger party-affiliated PACs. In 2021

2158-553: Is created with the intention of misleading readers, online news consumers who attempt to fact-check the articles they read may incorrectly conclude that a fake news article is legitimate. Rose states, "A diligent online news consumer is likely at a pervasive risk of inferring truth from false premises " and suggests that fact-checking alone is not enough to reduce fake news consumption. Despite this, Rose asserts that fact-checking "ought to remain on educational agendas to help combat fake news". The term fake news became popularized with

2241-437: Is gaining momentum. However, fake news detection on social media presents challenges that renders previous data mining and detection techniques inadequate. As such, researchers are calling for more work to be done regarding fake news as characterized against psychology and social theories and adapting existing data mining algorithms to apply to social media networks. Further, multiple scientific articles have been published urging

2324-731: Is impossible to apply absolute terms such as "true" or "false" to inherently debatable claims. In September 2016, a Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey found that "just 29% of all Likely U.S. Voters trust media fact-checking of candidates' comments. Sixty-two percent (62%) believe instead that news organizations skew the facts to help candidates they support." A paper by Andrew Guess (of Princeton University), Brendan Nyhan (Dartmouth College) and Jason Reifler (University of Exeter) found that consumers of fake news tended to have less favorable views of fact-checking, in particular Trump supporters. The paper found that fake news consumers rarely encountered fact-checks: "only about half of

2407-444: Is ineffective against propaganda for at least three reasons: "First, since much of what skillful propagandists say will be true on a literal level, the fact-checker will be unable to refute them. Second, no matter how well-intentioned or convincing, the fact-check will also spread the initial claims further. Third, even if the fact-checker manages to catch a few inaccuracies, the larger picture and suggestion will remain in place, and it

2490-479: Is intended to prevent them from operating campaigns that complement or parallel those of the candidates they support or engaging in negotiations that could result in quid pro quo bargaining between donors to the PAC and the candidate or officeholder. However, it is legal for candidates and super PAC managers to discuss campaign strategy and tactics through the media. In 2024, a Federal Election Commission ruling eased

2573-553: Is most often followed by a written report of inaccuracies, sometimes with a visual metric provided by the checking organization (e.g., Pinocchios from The Washington Post Fact Checker, or TRUTH-O-METER ratings from PolitiFact ). Several organizations are devoted to post hoc fact-checking: examples include FactCheck.org and PolitiFact in the US, and Full Fact in the UK . External post hoc fact-checking organizations first arose in

Congressional Leadership Fund - Misplaced Pages Continue

2656-466: Is sometimes criticized as being opinion journalism . A review of US politics fact-checkers shows a mixed result of whether fact-checking is an effective way to reduce misconceptions , and whether the method is reliable. Sensationalist newspapers in the 1850s and later led to a gradual need for a more factual media. Colin Dickey has described the subsequent evolution of fact-checking. Key elements were

2739-717: Is the process of verifying the factual accuracy of questioned reporting and statements. Fact-checking can be conducted before or after the text or content is published or otherwise disseminated. Internal fact-checking is such checking done in-house by the publisher to prevent inaccurate content from being published; when the text is analyzed by a third party, the process is called external fact-checking . Research suggests that fact-checking can indeed correct perceptions among citizens, as well as discourage politicians from spreading false or misleading claims. However, corrections may decay over time or be overwhelmed by cues from elites who promote less accurate claims. Political fact-checking

2822-429: Is this suggestion that moves minds and hearts, and eventually actions." They also note the very large amount of false information that regularly spreads around the world, overwhelming the hundreds of fact-checking groups; caution that a fact-checker systemically addressing propaganda potentially compromises their objectivity; and argue that even descriptive statements are subjective, leading to conflicting points of view. As

2905-523: Is when a correction increases the their belief in the misconception. One reason is that it can be interpreted as an argument from authority , leading to resistance and hardening beliefs, "because identity and cultural positions cannot be disproved." In other words "while news articles can be fact-checked, personal beliefs cannot." Critics argue that political fact-checking is increasingly used as opinion journalism . Criticism has included that fact-checking organizations in themselves are biased or that it

2988-692: The 2016 United States presidential election , fake news has been a popular topic of discussion by President Trump and news outlets. The reality of fake news had become omnipresent, and a lot of research has gone into understanding, identifying, and combating fake news. Also, a number of researchers began with the usage of fake news to influence the 2016 presidential campaign. One research found evidence of pro-Trump fake news being selectively targeted on conservatives and pro-Trump supporters in 2016. The researchers found that social media sites, Facebook in particular, to be powerful platforms to spread certain fake news to targeted groups to appeal to their sentiments during

3071-867: The Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC, listing 23 pop-up Super PACs which had failed to disclose their affiliation to other PACs mostly affiliated with leaderships of the two major parties. Super PACs may support particular candidacies. In the 2012 presidential election, super PACs played a major role, spending more than the candidates' election campaigns in the Republican primaries. As of early April 2012, Restore Our Future —a super PAC usually described as having been created to help Mitt Romney 's presidential campaign—had spent $ 40 million. Winning Our Future (a pro– Newt Gingrich group) spent $ 16 million. Some Super PACs are run or advised by

3154-489: The FEC and by independent organizations such as OpenSecrets . Yet despite disclosure rules, political action committees have found ways to get around them. The 2020 election attracted record amounts of donations from dark money groups to political committees like super PACs. These groups are required to reveal their backers, but they can hide the true source of funding by reporting a non-disclosing nonprofit or shell company as

3237-671: The Journal of Politics found that "individuals consistently update political beliefs in the appropriate direction, even on facts that have clear implications for political party reputations, though they do so cautiously and with some bias... Interestingly, those who identify with one of the political parties are no more biased or cautious than pure independents in their learning, conditional on initial beliefs." A study by Yale University cognitive scientists Gordon Pennycook and David G. Rand found that Facebook tags of fake articles "did significantly reduce their perceived accuracy relative to

3320-518: The Reporters' Lab at Duke University's focus on providing resources to journalists. The adaptation of social media as a legitimate and commonly used platform has created extensive concerns for fake news in this domain. The spread of fake news via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram presents the opportunity for extremely negative effects on society therefore new fields of research regarding fake news detection on social media

3403-468: The 2016 United States presidential election, causing concern among some that online media platforms were especially susceptible to disseminating disinformation and misinformation. Fake news articles tend to come from either satirical news websites or from websites with an incentive to propagate false information, either as clickbait or to serve a purpose. The language, specifically, is typically more inflammatory in fake news than real articles, in part because

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3486-564: The 2016 election, CLF used stolen hacked material in attacks ads against a Democratic candidate. In 2018, the CLF was described as "the highest-spending super PAC seeking to sway House races in the upcoming midterms." CLF was the largest Republican outside spender in the special election to fill Montana's at-large seat vacated by then Rep. Ryan Zinke after he was appointed to serve as Secretary of Interior by President Donald Trump. CLF invested $ 2.5 million in Montana to promote Greg Gianforte to

3569-446: The 2016 presidential campaign, super PACs were described (by journalist Matea Gold) as "finding creative ways to work in concert" with the candidates they supported and work around the "narrowly drawn" legal rule that separated political campaigns from outside groups/super PACs. "Nearly every top presidential hopeful" had "a personalized super PAC" that raised "unlimited sums" and was "run by close associates or former aides". Not only did

3652-585: The 2016 presidential race. Additionally, researchers from Stanford , NYU , and NBER found evidence to show how engagement with fake news on Facebook and Twitter was high throughout 2016. Recently, a lot of work has gone into helping detect and identify fake news through machine learning and artificial intelligence. In 2018, researchers at MIT's CSAIL created and tested a machine learning algorithm to identify false information by looking for common patterns, words, and symbols that typically appear in fake news. More so, they released an open-source data set with

3735-622: The 2018 election cycle, the Congressional Leadership Fund raised $ 158 million and disbursed $ 159 million. Sheldon and Miriam Adelson gave $ 55 million of that. Super PAC Super PACs were made possible by two judicial decisions in 2010: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and, two months later, Speechnow.org v. FEC . In Speechnow.org , the federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that PACs that did not make contributions to candidates, parties, or other PACs could accept unlimited contributions from individuals, unions, and corporations (both for profit and not-for-profit) for

3818-520: The Americans who visited a fake news website during the study period also saw any fact-check from one of the dedicated fact-checking website (14.0%)." Deceptive websites that pose as fact-checkers have also been used to promote disinformation ; this tactic has been used by both Russia and Turkey. During the COVID-19 pandemic , Facebook announced it would "remove false or debunked claims about

3901-476: The FEC regulations allow campaigns to "publicly signal their needs to independent groups", political operatives on both sides "can talk to one another directly, as long as they do not discuss candidate strategy." Candidates are even allowed by the FEC "to appear at super PAC fundraisers, as long as they do not solicit more than $ 5,000". Representative David E. Price (D–NC) complained "The rules of affiliation are just about as porous as they can be, and it amounts to

3984-564: The Federal Elections Commission verifies PolitiFact's reporting. The super PAC also made headlines in 2017 after it released its first ad against Democrat Jon Ossoff, with an ad featuring college video footage of Ossoff dressed up as Han Solo of Star Wars. The ad was the first significant spending from any outside GOP group. In August 2018, Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger accused CLF of being illicitly in possession of an unredacted federal security clearance application, which contains sensitive personal information, and that CLF had provided

4067-570: The GOP after former HHS Secretary Tom Price vacated the seat when he was nominated by President Donald Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services. CLF repeatedly made the claim that San Francisco "Bay Area liberals have given more to Jon Ossoff's campaign than people in Georgia," a statement that has been rated false by the fact-checking website PolitiFact . A simple search through

4150-561: The U.S. House of Representatives. Rep.-elect Gianforte was charged with assaulting a journalist at a rally on May 24, 2017, on the eve of the special election. Three of the state's largest newspapers, the Billings Gazette , the Missoulian and the (Helena) Independent Record , rescinded their endorsements of Gianforte shortly following the incident. Rep.-elect Gianforte was scheduled to appear in court before June 7, where he

4233-612: The US in the early 2000s, and the concept grew in relevance and spread to various other countries during the 2010s. External post hoc fact-checking by independent organizations began in the United States in the early 2000s. In the 2010s, particularly following the 2016 election of Donald Trump as US President , fact-checking gained a rise in popularity and spread to multiple countries mostly in Europe and Latin America. However,

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4316-555: The US remains the largest market for fact-checking. One 2016 study finds that fact-checkers PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and The Washington Post's Fact Checker overwhelmingly agree on their evaluations of claims. A 2018 paper found little overlap in the statements checked by different fact-checking organizations. This paper compared 1,178 published fact-checks from PolitiFact with 325 fact-checks from The Washington Post ' s Fact Checker, and found only 77 statements (about 5%) that both organizations checked. For those 77 statements,

4399-486: The behavior, in general, of both the speaker (making them more careful in their pronouncements) and of the listener or reader (making them more discerning with regard to the factual accuracy of content); observations include the propensities of audiences to be completely unpersuaded by corrections to errors regarding the most divisive subjects, or the tendency to be more greatly persuaded by corrections of negative reporting (e.g., "attack ads"), and to see minds changed only when

4482-425: The candidate is being honest." A study of Trump supporters during the 2016 presidential campaign found that while fact-checks of false claims made by Trump reduced his supporters' belief in the false claims in question, the corrections did not alter their attitudes towards Trump. A 2019 study found that "summary fact-checking", where the fact-checker summarizes how many false statements a politician has made, has

4565-411: The conservative Club for Growth , and the liberal Commonsense Ten (later renamed Senate Majority PAC). Their advisory opinions gave a sample wording letter which all super PACs must submit to qualify for the deregulated status, and such letters continue to be used by super PACs up to the present date. FEC Chairman Steven T. Walther dissented on both opinions and issued a statement giving his thoughts. In

4648-461: The donor. By using this tactic, dark money groups can get around a 2020 court ruling that attempts to require nonprofits running political ads to reveal their donors. It is also possible to spend money without voters knowing the identities of donors before voting takes place. In federal elections, for example, political action committees have the option to choose to file reports on a "monthly" or "quarterly" basis. This allows funds raised by PACs in

4731-520: The election of Paul D. Ryan as Speaker of the House, it became closely linked to Ryan. In The Guardian 's ranking of the five most bigoted campaign ads during the 2018 election campaign, four of the five were ads by the CLF. During the 2018 mid-term elections. CLF produced a number of false ads, including two that falsely linked two Democratic candidates with terrorists. In one ad, the CLF depicted Antonio Delgado , an African-American Rhodes scholar with

4814-464: The establishment of Associated Press in the 1850s (short factual material needed), Ralph Pulitzer of the New York World (his Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play, 1912), Henry Luce and Time magazine (original working title: Facts), and the famous fact-checking department of The New Yorker . More recently, the mainstream media has come under severe economic threat from online startups. In addition,

4897-416: The fact-checking had an impact. A 2019 study in the Journal of Experimental Political Science found "strong evidence that citizens are willing to accept corrections to fake news, regardless of their ideology and the content of the fake stories." A 2018 study found that Republicans were more likely to correct their false information on voter fraud if the correction came from Breitbart News rather than

4980-544: The fact-checking organizations gave the same ratings for 49 statements and similar ratings for 22, about 92% agreement. Different fact-checking organizations have shown different tendencies in their choice of which statements they publish fact-checks about. For example, some are more likely to fact-check a statement about climate change being real, and others are more likely to fact-check a statement about climate change being fake. Studies of post hoc fact-checking have made clear that such efforts often result in changes in

5063-440: The field further to find automatic ways in which fake news can be filtered out of social media timelines. Lateral reading, or getting a brief overview of a topic from lots of sources instead of digging deeply into one, is a popular method professional fact-checkers use to quickly get a better sense of the truth of a particular claim. Digital tools and services commonly used by fact-checkers include, but are not limited to: Since

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5146-499: The final days of the election to be spent and votes cast before the report is due and the donors identities' are known. In one high-profile case, a donor to a super PAC kept his name hidden by using an LLC formed for the purpose of hiding the donor's name. One super PAC, that originally listed a $ 250,000 donation from an LLC that no one could find, led to a subsequent filing where the previously "secret donors" were revealed. However, campaign finance experts have argued that this tactic

5229-437: The following recommendations: A 2019 meta-analysis of research into the effects of fact-checking on misinformation found that fact-checking has substantial positive impacts on political beliefs, but that this impact weakened when fact-checkers used "truth scales", refuted only parts of a claim and when they fact-checked campaign-related statements. Individuals' preexisting beliefs, ideology, and knowledge affected to what extent

5312-602: The forefront of media issues. The holiday is held on April 2 because "April 1 is a day for fools. April 2 is a day for facts." Activities for International Fact-Checking Day consist of various media organizations contributing to fact-checking resources, articles, and lessons for students and the general public to learn more about how to identify fake news and stop the spread of misinformation. 2020's International Fact-Checking Day focused specifically on how to accurately identify information about COVID-19 . Research has shown that fact-checking has limits, and can even backfire, which

5395-529: The form of addons ) misinformation mitigation . Efforts such as providing and viewing structured accuracy assessments on posts "are not currently supported by the platforms". Trust in the default or, in decentralized designs, user-selected providers of assessments (and their reliability) as well as the large quantities of posts and articles are two of the problems such approaches may face. Moreover, they cannot mitigate misinformation in chats, print-media and TV . The concept for International Fact-Checking Day

5478-569: The individual in error was someone reasonably like-minded to begin with. Studies have shown that fact-checking can affect citizens' belief in the accuracy of claims made in political advertisement. A 2020 study by Paris School of Economics and Sciences Po economists found that falsehoods by Marine Le Pen during the 2017 French presidential election campaign (i) successfully persuaded voters, (ii) lost their persuasiveness when fact-checked, and (iii) did not reduce voters' political support for Le Pen when her claims were fact-checked. A 2017 study in

5561-416: The journal Science , saying a new investigation is needed because 'theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable." The policy led to an article by The New York Post that suggested a lab leak would be plausible to be initially labeled as "false information" on the platform. This reignited debates into the notion of scientific consensus . In an article published by

5644-753: The left who criticized the assumptions of American imperialism", rebuttals that may not be factual themselves, issues of general media bias , and "the near ubiquitous refusal to identify patterns, trends, and ... intent in politicians' ... false statements". They further argue that political fact-checking focuses exclusively on describing facts over making moral judgments (ex., the is–ought problem ), assert that it relies on public reason to attempt to discredit public figures, and question its effectiveness on conspiracy theories or fascism . Likewise, writing in The Hedgehog Review in 2023, Jonathan D. Teubner and Paul W. Gleason assert that fact-checking

5727-445: The linked American Action Network . According to records from the Federal Elections Commission, during the 2012 election cycle, CLF raised $ 11.3 million and spent $ 10.8 million. Of the 19 congressional races where CLF and the affiliated American Action Network paid for television ads, Republicans won 12 of the contests. The non-partisan Sunlight Foundation reported that CLF had a 58.05% return on investment in 2012. Their largest donor

5810-406: The medical journal The BMJ , journalist Laurie Clarke said "The contentious nature of these decisions is partly down to how social media platforms define the slippery concepts of misinformation versus disinformation . This decision relies on the idea of a scientific consensus. But some scientists say that this smothers heterogeneous opinions, problematically reinforcing a misconception that science

5893-470: The news. There is also many social context features that can play a role, as well as the model of spreading the news. Websites such as " Snopes " try to detect this information manually, while certain universities are trying to build mathematical models to assist in this work. Some individuals and organizations publish their fact-checking efforts on the internet. These may have a special subject-matter focus, such as Snopes.com 's focus on urban legends or

5976-574: The novel coronavirus which created a global pandemic", based on its fact-checking partners, collectively known as the International Fact-Checking Network . In 2021, Facebook reversed its ban on posts speculating the COVID-19 disease originated from Chinese labs, following developments in the investigations into the origin of COVID-19 , including claims by the Biden administration, and a letter by eighteen scientists in

6059-401: The pandemic." Several commentators have noted limitations of political post-hoc fact-checking. While interviewing Andrew Hart in 2019 about political fact-checking in the United States, Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson discuss what they perceive as an unspoken conservative bias framed as neutrality in certain fact-checks, citing argument from authority , "hyper-literal ... scolding [of] people on

6142-440: The purpose is to confuse and generate clicks. Furthermore, modeling techniques such as n-gram encodings and bag of words have served as other linguistic techniques to estimate the legitimacy of a news source. On top of that, researchers have determined that visual-based cues also play a factor in categorizing an article, specifically some features can be designed to assess if a picture was legitimate and provides us more clarity on

6225-502: The purpose of making independent expenditures. The result of the Citizens United and SpeechNow.org decisions was the rise of a new type of political action committee in 2010, popularly dubbed the "super PAC". In an open meeting on July 22, 2010, the FEC approved two Advisory Opinions to modify FEC policy in accordance with the legal decisions. These Advisory Opinions were issued in response to requests from two existing PACs,

6308-475: The rapid spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories via social media is slowly creeping into mainstream media. One solution is for more media staff to be assigned a fact-checking role, as for example The Washington Post . Independent fact-checking organisations have also become prominent, such as PolitiFact . Ante hoc fact-checking aims to identify errors so that the text can be corrected before dissemination, or perhaps rejected. Post hoc fact-checking

6391-468: The reputational costs or risks of spreading misinformation for political elites. The researchers sent, "a series of letters about the risks to their reputation and electoral security if they were caught making questionable statements. The legislators who were sent these letters were substantially less likely to receive a negative fact-checking rating or to have their accuracy questioned publicly, suggesting that fact-checking can reduce inaccuracy when it poses

6474-485: The restrictions on super PACs. Super PACs were allowed to coordinate with campaigns for the purposes of canvassing, which was deemed not "public communications." By January 2010, at least 38 states and the federal government required disclosure for all or some independent expenditures or electioneering communications. These disclosures were intended to deter potentially or seemingly corrupting donations . Contributions to, and expenditures by, Super PACs are tracked by

6557-619: The statement, Walther stated "There are provisions of the Act and Commission regulations not addressed by the court in SpeechNow that continue to prohibit Commonsense Ten from soliciting or accepting contributions from political committees in excess of $ 5,000 annually or any contributions from corporations or labor organizations" (emphasis in original). The term "super PAC" was coined by reporter Eliza Newlin Carney. According to Politico , Carney,

6640-527: Was Sheldon Adelson , who gave $ 5 million in 2012. Other major donors included the late Texas home builder Bob J. Perry and Chevron . According to records from the Federal Election Commission, during the 2014 election cycle, CLF raised $ 12.6 million and spent $ 12.56 million. According to records from the Federal Elections Commission, during the 2016 election cycle, CLF raised just over $ 51.05 million and spent $ 50.05 million. During

6723-548: Was donated by publicly traded corporations . As of February 2012, according to OpenSecrets , 313 groups organized as super PACs had received $ 98,650,993 and spent $ 46,191,479. This means early in the 2012 election cycle, PACs had already greatly exceeded total receipts of 2008. The leading super PAC on its own raised more money than the combined total spent by the top 9 PACS in the 2008 cycle. Super PACs have been criticized for relying heavily on negative ads. The 2012 figures do not include funds raised by state level PACs. In

6806-566: Was introduced at a conference for journalists and fact-checkers at the London School of Economics in June 2014. The holiday was officially created in 2016 and first celebrated on April 2, 2017. The idea for International Fact-Checking day rose out of the many misinformation campaigns found on the internet, particularly social media sites. It rose in importance after the 2016 elections, which brought fake news, as well as accusations of it, to

6889-515: Was required to answer an accusation that he "purposely or knowingly" caused "bodily injury to another". Rep. Elect Gianforte won slightly more than 50 percent of the vote to about 44 percent for Mr. Quist, the Democrat. President Trump won Montana by about 20 percentage points. On June 12, 2017, Gianforte pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and was sentenced to a 180-day deferred sentence, 40 hours of community service, 20 hours of anger management and

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