Redesigning fact-checking
How can we redesign real-time fact checking to better engage with our audience? Univision collaborated with a group of Latin American journalists to find out.
This week, Univision invited journalists from 11 news organizations in Latin America and Spain to collaborate on the challenge of redesigning fact-checking. For two days we brainstormed ideas and prototyped them during the third and final presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. This is a summary of a collaboration that created a pop-up Spanish-language newsroom in Miami.
Designing new solutions
During the kick-off meeting, we ran a design sprint that started late in the afternoon and went through midnight to come up with new ideas, and a plan to test them. Participants worked in small groups of 3–5 people through 15-minutes design exercises, followed by feedback. We took a break to make this video. At the end, we had a bunch of ideas to improve real-time fact-checking and a working plan to try them during the 90-minute presidential debate.
Shaking up routines
We tried to change as little as possible of the existing workflows, but working routines needed some adjustments to accommodate the four new teams resulting from the initial work. There was a new social media plan to expand the conversation around live fact-checking; a team working on analyzing and visualizing all the data resulting from the presidential debate; a group focused on tracking the conversation during the debate and what might be missed, and another one working on video. We paired them with journalists from Univision to help coordinate their work. We assumed the risk of shaking up things for the learning experience of bringing in new perspectives and skills, and being able to quickly prototype and test new ideas.
Connecting with the audience
The social media team created more opportunities for the audience to participate in the fact-checking process. During the debate, journalists from Lupa (Brazil), New York Times en Español, Colombiacheck (Colombia), and Univision created seven Twitter polls on the facts that were being verified, and a series of follow-up tweets with the results of the fact-checking process. Social media activity during the debate and the following day got two million impressions. Here's a roundup of these tweets in this "Twitter moment."
Visualizing the debate
One of the recurrent themes of the design session focused on visual narratives to summarize all the data from the fact-checking work. A team of developers and journalists from La Nación (Argentina), Ojo Público (Peru), UYCheck (Uruguay) and Univision prototyped one of these ideas and published it right after the debate. We’ll publish another post later with all the details about this project. (Update: This work received an award at the 25th edition of the Malofiej International Infographics Awards)
One team, many platforms
Throughout the two-day collaboration, we collaboratively produced a stream of social media content and news stories that were distributed and amplified through the journalists’ networks. These are some examples:
- “Inmigration on the campaign trail: A problem that extends far beyond the Mexican border”
An in-depth analysis of the candidate’s answers on immigration, and what was missing by a team of journalists from Plaza Pública (Guatemala), Semanario Universidad (Costa Rica), Animal Político (México) and Univision. - “Las mentiras del tercer debate”
A summary of the third presidential debate, published by Univision’s Detector de Mentiras. - “¿Quién es más mentiroso… Hillary Clinton o Donald Trump?”
Similar content, edited and published by The New York Times in Spanish with bylines from journalists participating in the fact-checking collaboration. - “Debate en EEUU: ¿Cómo detectar sin un candidato miente?”
A mashup piece, published by La Nación (Argentina). - “Las mentiras del debate”
Univision’s Noticiero Digital featuring Spanish’s journalist Natalia Hernández, from Objetivo La Sexta.
