Democratic societies inherently depend on an informed citizenry. By shaping citizens’ voting behavior, fostering political cynicism, and reducing trust in institutions, misinformation can pose significant challenges to individuals and societies. Against this backdrop, fact-checking initiatives aimed at verifying the accuracy of publicly disseminated (mis)information have flourished worldwide. However, existing research is disproportionately oriented toward the Global North, with a focus on the United States and the most influential organizations. Equally scarce are comparative studies. To address these shortcomings, this study introduces a context-sensitive framework for analyzing fact-checking cultures and illustrates its application in a cross-national comparative design by contrasting two countries from the Global South and North: Brazil and Germany. Using a mixed-methods design, we integrate computational, qualitative, and quantitative content analysis of 11 fact-checking organizations and 13,498 fact-checking articles over 11 years (2013–2023), alongside qualitative semistructured interviews with fact-checkers ( N = 10). Our findings reveal several areas of divergence and convergence, suggesting that fact-checking cultures transcend organizational and national boundaries.

中文翻译：

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“我们追踪虚假信息”：概念化和分析各国事实核查文化


民主社会本质上依赖于知情的公民。通过影响公民的投票行为、培养政治犬儒主义以及降低对机构的信任，错误信息可能给个人和社会带来重大挑战。在此背景下，旨在验证公开传播（错误）信息准确性的事实核查举措在全球范围内蓬勃发展。然而，现有的研究不成比例地面向全球北方，重点关注美国和最有影响力的组织。同样缺乏的是比较研究。为了解决这些缺点，本研究引入了一个用于分析事实核查文化的上下文相关框架，并通过对比全球南方和北方的两个国家：巴西和德国，说明了其在跨国比较设计中的应用。使用混合方法设计，我们整合了 11 年来（2013-2023）11 个事实核查组织和 13,498 篇事实核查文章的计算、定性和定量内容分析，以及对事实核查人员的定性半结构化访谈（N = 10） ）。我们的研究结果揭示了几个领域的分歧和趋同，表明事实核查文化超越了组织和国家的界限。