Fact-Checkers, Tech-Giants, and Algorithmic Systems
Mette Bengtsson, Sabina Schousboe, Johan Farkas, Anna Schjøtt · 2024
Fact-checking and the effort to establish shared understandings of reality are essentially a matter of ethos, credibility, and trust in other people, institutions, and technologies. This chapter analyzes fact-checking practices and the actors involved, exploring how they characterize one another and how they consider potential gains and risks when entering into relational and dispersed constructions of ethos. The chapter shows that phronesis is the dominant element in the fact-checkers’ interpretation of the ethos of the algorithmic system offered to fact-checkers by Meta as part of their Third-Party Fact-Checking Program. However, the demonstration of arête to repair their reputation seems to be the primary motivation for Meta. While Meta considers the partnership program beneficial for journalistic fact-checkers and their democratic values, the fact-checkers downplay the black-boxed nature and automation of the algorithmic system and highlight it as part of a strategy to protect their journalistic reputation. Ultimately, the chapter shows that ethos is not only ascribed in relations among humans, as humans also ascribe ethos to technologies, and it is these various ascriptions that are essential to understanding ethos in the fact-checking ecology.