Fake news and misinformation are a common practice in every informative environment (Park, 1940). Their spread reduces society’s trust in news media outlets. Current communicative landscape, starring by the speed in both news dispersion and consumption and the growing importance of content dissemination through social media, is a fertile ground for the circulation of misinformation (Zubiaga et al, 2016). Through spaces like Facebook or Twitter it is possible to access audiences that could even be higher than those reached by renowned media outlets (Fletcher et al., 2018).
Recently, we have attended to the development of many fact-checking initiatives, both independent and linked to distinguished journalistic brands (Stencel and Griffin, 2018). These projects are of the greatest importance in significant events like elections or referendums, where a higher circulation of fake news has been detected (Graves, 2016).
Regarding this, information visualization has proven to be a very useful tool for complex data communication (Langer and Zeiller, 2017). Furthermore, this could be a clear and appealing way for transmitting facts about the epidemic crisis by revealing patterns and relationships between data, and for showing molecular processes, biological cycles or the spatial spread of the disease to the general public (Alcíbar, 2017).
One of the greatest examples in the spread of misinformation its being the current coronavirus epidemic. Since the beginning of 2020, information and misinformation about this disease have experienced an exponential increase, causing some episodes of hate speech or a general alarm in many cases. Therefore, examples like this show us how fake news can be seriously detrimental for the normal development of the society.
This research highlights how three journalistic brands specialised in information verification —Snopes.com, BBC Reality Check and Les Décodeurs— are publishing their fact-checking works for verifying misinformation on coronavirus. Moreover, the authors are reviewing the information visualization projects published in three flagship media outlets —The New York Times, El País and The Guardian— in their home countries and all over the world. Thus, it will be possible to display what is the strategy of these renowned journalistic brands in their effort for spread accurate data about this scourge.
The research method used is the content analysis of all the news pieces published by these six media outlets between 1st
of January and 15st of May 2020 —for showing the most updated data at the Conference—. The authors are using an analysis card for each discipline— whose objective is to discover the techniques, methods and formal elements of the fact -checking and information visualization pieces in terms of narrative structure, verification systems, elements that make them up, graphic forms, and so on. Secondly, case study is also being used, in terms of studying the case of how each media outlet is covering this issue.
This presentation, part of a national research project about online media outlets, tries to understand how these six journalistic brands are debunking falsehood on coronavirus epidemic. This work will serve to analyse and understand the development of the informative communication of this phenomenon.