Journalism Education in the era beyond digitalization: the impact of fact-checking and verification techniques upon journalism students

Abstract

Fact checking and verification techniques have been called to tackle disinformation (Silverman, 2014) as a significant problem for journalists and news organizations around the world. A thorough understanding of how to include these practices in media education and also to measure their impact on journalism students’ daily practice is a major challenge. This paper aims to examine the effectiveness of fact checking and verification training through a qualitative study based on two focus groups of journalism students that have been trained in implementing such techniques in Greece and Cyprus. Our intention is to examine the extent to which these groups can implement and evaluate such tools in their daily practices. As such, the method used is focus group interviews to assess attitudes toward fact checking techniques. Through our analysis we aim to document several important challenges in introducing these courses. To this end, this study presents the most in-depth examination of journalism students’ attitudes towards fact checking to date and of its effects on students’ factual knowledge and implementation. Overall, this paper reports on the lessons learned by introducing fact checking and verification in teaching journalism curricula in an era beyond digitalization.