Engaging in democracy is important to many people, evident in the 3.5 million people demonstrating on German streets. CORRECTIV.Faktenforum, the first in the German-speaking region, enables this engagement with a sustainable and societal impact. Since the community's official launch at the start of this year, the project is gradually opening up to external users. By this users can actively take action against false claims and contribute to a fact-based discourse. Researchers from the noFake consortium, including Prof. Dr. Tatjana Scheffler, head of the Digital Forensic Linguistics research group at Ruhr-University, are involved in the project.
AI as a tool against disinformation
Technologies based on Artificial Intelligence are fueling disinformation, but the CORRECTIV.Faktenforum also views them as an important part of the solution. Since 2022, CORRECTIV has been collaborating therefore with scientists from TU Berlin, Ruhr-University Bochum, and TU Dortmund. The consortium partners contribute their expertise, for example in Machine Learning, and work on AI-based tools. " AI won't fully overtake fact-checking, but will expedite the tasks, making them more efficient and accessible”, states Dorothea Kolossa, professor at TU Berlin, Associated Member of the HGI and head of the noFake research consortium. “A minute is often enough to spread disinformation, but it takes hours or days to refute – time during which misinformation can cause essential harm. Intelligent systems can shorten the time taken by tackling the problem."
CORRECTIV has a long history of journalistic participation projects for democratic involvement, such as Salon 5 and the CrowdNewsroom. "The key aspect of the CORRECTIV.Faktenforum is the community itself. We provide a platform to combat disinformation and contribute to a fact-based debate," explains Caroline Lindekamp from the CORRECTIV.Faktenforum. "Many users submit suspicious claims to CORRECTIV's editorial team or attend our fact-checking workshops. There is a clear awareness of the problem and a desire to take action. Therefore, we're applying the idea of citizen journalism to fact-checking." At the beginning of this year the project kicked of with a newsletter and initial community offers. Simultaneously, the platform's functionalities are expanding with a closed user area for collaborative fact-checking.
Further information at the Correctiv.Faktenforum.
General note: In case of using gender-assigning attributes we include all those who consider themselves in this gender regardless of their own biological sex.