When a Journalistic Truth-Seeking Tradition Thrives: Examining the Rise of the Brazilian Fact-Checking Movement

ABSTRACT

This study addresses socio-political and professional factors driving the surge of the Brazilian fact-checking venture in the last years. Drawing on a set of 16 semi-structured interviews with fact-checkers from 13 active initiatives, it delves into motivations that led journalists to put in motion their fact-checking firms. Based on the existing literature on structural dynamics and professional incentives for fact-checking, the paper suggests that these two instances concur with the advancement of that journalistic subgenre. Research findings show that the last two electoral cycles (2014–2018) created a thriving landscape for fact-checking due to growing political turmoil in Brazil. Besides, there is also an isomorphic tendency in the development of new fact-checking initiatives. Pioneer American and Argentinean fact-checking firms inspired first projects. Nevertheless, motivations for fact-checking have been increasingly diverse over the years, including training workshops, successful coalitions, and grants from foreign investors. This study contributes to the growing scholarship on an emerging journalistic subfield showing the context-sensitive nature of the expansion of the fact-checking enterprise in a milieu distinct from the US-European landscape. Furthermore, it stresses how structural and professional factors act as field-configuring instances of new journalistic ventures.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalism studies
• fact-checking
• socio-political background
• professional culture
• electoral cycles
• isomorphism

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Dr Lorena Caminhas and Dr Roseli Figaro for their valuable suggestions in the early versions of this study. I also appreciate the anonymous reviewers’ feedback that substantially improves the manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Although research in Portuguese language journals has considered the development of fact-checking as a journalistic subgenre in Brazil (Diniz 2018; Spinelli and Santos 2018; Santos 2019; Seibt and Fonseca 2019; Lelo and Pachi Filho 2021), it does not examine factors and contexts influencing the rise of fact-checking initiatives in the country.

2 Sources accessed to build this study sample are available in the following links: Duke Reporters’ Lab (https://reporterslab.org/fact-checking/); IFCN signatories list (https://ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/signatories); CoronaVirusFacts Alliance (https://www.poynter.org/coronavirusfactsalliance/); Comprova Project active partners (https://projetocomprova.com.br/about/partners/); Rede Nacional de Combate à Desinformação (https://rncd.org/); members list of Program to Fight Against Disinformation during 2020 elections (https://www.justicaeleitoral.jus.br/fato-ou-boato/#como-identificar).

3 The research considers active fact-checking enterprises those publishing content regularly (at least for seven months) throughout 2020.

4 The Congresso Nacional (National Congress) is a bicameral system made up of two houses: the lower house of the parliament is the Câmara dos Deputados (Chamber of Deputies), composed by 513 elected representatives; and the upper one is the Senado Federal (Federal Senate), which has 81 seats (Federal government of Brazil 2020). The legislative body in Brazil is comparable to the United States Congress, which is also a bicameral system comprising a lower body (the House of Representatives) and an upper one (the Senate).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation under Grant number 2019/01330-0.