Fact-checking direct democracy

Détails

ID Serval
serval:BIB_11596B4644E5
Type
Partie de livre
Sous-type
Chapitre: chapitre ou section
Collection
Publications
Institution
Titre
Fact-checking direct democracy
Titre du livre
Misinformation in Referenda
Auteur⸱e⸱s
Bernhard Laurent
Editeur
Routledge
ISBN
9780429274725
Statut éditorial
Publié
Date de publication
07/07/2020
Editeur⸱rice scientifique
Baume Sandrine, Boillet Véronique, Martenet Vincent
Pages
77-90
Langue
anglais
Résumé
The recent boom of fact-checking has raised scholarly interest in these activities. As opposed to elections, the domain of direct democracies has remained unexplored so far. This chapter studies the journalistic work in the selection and presentation of fact-checked claims about referenda and initiatives. More specifically, the empirical analysis examines the extent to which journalists include checkable claims and whether the rating scores of political actors vary according to partisan affiliation. It focuses on Switzerland, the paradigmatic case of direct democracy, by examining 107 claims analyzed by TA-Faktencheck, the country’s most ambitious fact-checking project. These claims were made by politicians in the framework of the political TV show, Arena, on 14 ballot propositions that were submitted to the people for voting purposes from February 2016 to May 2018. Two main findings emerge from a quantitative content analysis. First, slightly more than 40% of the included claims fail to pass the “checkability test” since they refer to opinions, predict the future, or are vague in nature. Second, this study documents considerable partisan variation in terms of rating scores, as the members of the Swiss People’s Party from the radical right are shown to perform significantly worse than those from the Social Democrats. This chapter suggests that journalistic fact-checking practice needs to be improved.
Mots-clé
Direct democracy, Fact-checking, Journalism, Switzerland
Création de la notice
20/07/2020 10:45
Dernière modification de la notice
04/02/2021 10:49
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