Chapter 32 Exercises: Fact-Checking, Source Evaluation, and the Information Diet
Part I: Comprehension and Conceptual Review
Exercise 32.1 — Define and Distinguish
For each pair below, write a paragraph explaining the key distinction between the two concepts. Use at least one concrete example for each pair.
a) Professional fact-checking vs. opinion journalism b) Filter bubble vs. echo chamber c) Primary source vs. secondary source d) Backfire effect vs. correction paradox e) Volume problem vs. partisan credibility problem
Exercise 32.2 — IFCN Code of Principles
The IFCN Code of Principles specifies five commitments for certified fact-checking organizations.
a) List and briefly describe all five principles in your own words. b) For each principle, identify one concrete scenario in which an organization might appear to comply while actually violating the spirit of the principle. c) The chapter describes the Code's function as "normative rather than regulatory." What does this distinction mean? Is a normative-only standard valuable? What would a genuinely regulatory standard require?
Exercise 32.3 — Short Answer
Answer each question in 150–250 words.
a) Why did the original backfire effect hypothesis receive so much attention, and what does its failure to replicate tell us about how we should treat novel research findings in political communication?
b) James T. Hamilton used the word "diet" as a metaphor for information consumption. What specific features of the diet metaphor are analytically useful? What features of information consumption does the metaphor not capture?
c) Explain the "volume problem" in fact-checking. Why is it described as a structural problem rather than a resource problem? Could hiring more fact-checkers solve it?
d) What is the news desert problem, and why is it categorically different from the filter bubble problem as a threat to information quality?
Part II: Applied Analysis
Exercise 32.4 — Claim Classification
For each claim below, (a) classify it as: verifiable factual claim, value judgment, prediction, or ambiguous; (b) explain your reasoning; and (c) if it is a verifiable factual claim, identify what primary sources would be required to check it.
- "The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world."
- "Tax cuts for the wealthy are bad for the economy."
- "This immigration policy will reduce crime."
- "Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are at their highest point in 800,000 years."
- "Our city's schools are failing our children."
- "The 2020 presidential election was the most secure in American history."
- "Violent video games cause aggressive behavior."
- "More people died of drug overdoses last year than in the entire Vietnam War."
Exercise 32.5 — Live Fact-Check Exercise
Select a political claim made in the past 30 days by a national elected official in your country. It must be a specific, verifiable factual claim (not an opinion or prediction).
a) State the claim precisely, with source and date. b) Identify what evidence would be required to evaluate the claim. c) Locate at least three primary sources relevant to the claim. d) Evaluate the claim's accuracy based on your evidence. e) Check whether PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, or another IFCN-certified fact-checker has already evaluated this claim. If so, compare their findings and methodology to yours. If not, explain why the claim may not have been selected. f) Reflect: What was the hardest step in this process? What does that difficulty reveal about the challenges of professional fact-checking?
Exercise 32.6 — Source Evaluation Audit
Apply the Action Checklist from Section 32.13 to evaluate the following:
a) Find an article about a scientific claim shared on social media in the past month. Apply the full "Evaluating a News Article" protocol. Document each step and your finding.
b) Find an expert citation in a news article. Apply the "Evaluating an Expert Citation" protocol. Document each step and your finding.
c) Find a statistical claim in a political speech or campaign advertisement. Apply the "Evaluating a Statistical Claim" protocol. Locate the primary data source and compare the source's actual data to how it was characterized.
For each, write a paragraph concluding: (1) what you found, and (2) what a person without the time to apply this protocol would likely have concluded.
Exercise 32.7 — The Community Trust Map
Think of a community you are part of or have close knowledge of. It might be your hometown, a campus community, a religious congregation, a workplace, or a family network.
a) Identify five to eight information sources that members of this community regularly consume or cite. b) Research each source's credibility using the SIFT method and source evaluation protocol. c) Construct the community trust map (trusted/distrusted vs. reliable/unreliable quadrant diagram) for this community. d) Identify which quadrant represents the most significant problem for this community's information health. e) Propose one specific, realistic intervention for addressing that problem. Your intervention should be based on the inoculation approach, not direct correction.
Part III: Critical Analysis and Argumentation
Exercise 32.8 — Tariq's Challenge Revisited
Tariq Hassan's challenge in the chapter opening was: "Fact-checking is partisan. PolitiFact rates conservative statements as false more often than liberal ones."
Prof. Webb's response distinguished between fact-checkers introducing bias and reflecting an actual asymmetry in the rate of false claims.
a) Research this claim: Has there been academic study of ideological asymmetry in PolitiFact's ratings? What did the studies find? (Note: this is an exercise in actual primary research — find the studies, read the abstracts, and report the findings accurately.) b) Even if PolitiFact's ratings accurately reflect an asymmetry in false claims, what problems does that asymmetry create for PolitiFact's ability to function as a credible institution with the audiences most likely to be making the false claims? c) Is there a model of fact-checking that would escape this problem? If so, describe it. If not, explain the constraint.
Exercise 32.9 — Debate Position Development
The chapter's Debate Framework presents two positions on whether professional fact-checking is a net positive.
a) Choose one position (A or B) and write a 600–800 word formal argument for it. Your argument must engage with the strongest counterarguments from the opposing position. b) After completing (a), write a 200–300 word response to your own argument from the opposing position. What is the best counterargument to the case you just made? c) After completing (b), what is your honest evaluation of which position is stronger? Has writing both sides changed your view?
Exercise 32.10 — The Big Tobacco Model
The chapter uses Big Tobacco as a recurring example of how industry-funded research can function as "fact" for decades.
a) Research the specific mechanism by which tobacco industry funding influenced research findings between 1950 and 1990. (Find at least two academic sources documenting this.) b) Identify one contemporary industry or interest group that critics argue is using a structurally similar strategy to manufacture scientific doubt. What is the evidence for and against this characterization? c) The Big Tobacco case involved decades of delay before the truth was established. What role did professional journalism — and the absence of fact-checking infrastructure — play in that delay? What would have been different if today's fact-checking infrastructure had existed then?
Part IV: Synthesis and Application
Exercise 32.11 — The Nuremberg Documentation Parallel
The chapter references the post-war documentation project that established the historical record of Nazi atrocities as an analogy for professional fact-checking's archival function.
a) Research the Nuremberg documentation project. What primary sources were collected? By whom? For what initial purpose? b) What is the legitimate parallel between that project and the work of professional fact-checking organizations? What are the limits of the analogy? c) The chapter describes the evidentiary archive created by fact-checkers as a function with lasting historical value. How might the PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, or Washington Post Fact Checker archives be valuable to historians in 50 years, even if they have limited impact on the beliefs of current readers?
Exercise 32.12 — Ingrid's Question
Ingrid Larsen raised the distinction between embedded public media fact-checking (the Swedish SVT model) and standalone fact-checking organizations (PolitiFact, FactCheck.org model).
a) Research at least two examples of public media fact-checking units in different countries. How are they structured? How are they funded? How do they handle claims made by the government that funds them? b) Does embedded public media fact-checking escape the structural critiques in Section 32.5? Address each critique (volume problem, partisan credibility problem, framing problem) specifically. c) Would you prefer the embedded public media model or the standalone nonprofit model? Justify your preference with reference to the structural analysis in the chapter.
Exercise 32.13 — Information Diet Audit
Over one week, keep a detailed information diary:
a) Log every news article, social media post with political content, podcast, YouTube video, or conversation about current events. Record: source, topic, how you encountered it, roughly how much time you spent with it. b) At the end of the week, analyze your diet: What sources predominated? What topics were covered? What topics relevant to your community were absent? What is the ideological distribution of the sources you consumed? c) Using the criteria for a "healthy information diet" from Section 32.7, evaluate your own diet: What are its nutritional strengths? What are its deficiencies? d) Propose three specific, realistic changes to your information habits that would address the most significant deficiency you identified. Why are these changes realistic for you specifically, and what barriers might prevent you from sustaining them?
End of Chapter 32 Exercises