International Fact-Checking Day 2021: How Maldita.es fought against hoaxes in the year of the pandemic

That’s why we will be live on Maldita’s Twitch channel today, Friday 2nd at 1 pm (CET), where we will broadcast a special program with our founders Clara Jiménez Cruz and Julio Montes, and we look forward to having you join us to talk about how we work and how we build this non-profit media outlet thanks to you. You can also take a look at all the resources prepared by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) for this celebration day for all fact-checkers.

Do you know how to make torrijas? There will be surprises!

The year of the ‘infodemic’: many hoaxes and few facts

The pandemic arrived and with it came the biggest wave of disinformation we have seen at Maldita.es. More disinformation than ever and more dangerous than ever. We’ve seen influencers with millions of followers recommending prophylactic practices against COVID-19 that could directly endanger your health, and hundreds of hoaxes in the form of audios, chains, and videos that have generated more uncertainty than there already was.

As we say, at Maldita.es we have debunked more than 1,000 of those disinformations, a figure we would not have reached without the malditas and malditos alerting us through our WhatsApp about all the hoaxes you have received (+34 644 22 93 19). If you know someone who you think might also be interested, pass on our number so that we can grow larger in the fight against lies.

In addition to the lies, during the year of the pandemic, we have encountered many gaps in the data. Administrations have been publishing data in an irregular, incomplete, and uncoordinated manner, which has made our job of explaining what was happening more difficult.

Still, we have published things like the composition of the de-escalation committee that the Government refused to reveal, our map of coronavirus cases at the municipal level for all of Spain (information that after a year of pandemic we continue to update every week), and our team has strived to obtain the necessary information to understand the development of the pandemic.

The year of science, alliances, and awards 

This has also been a year in which we have worked hand in hand with many fellow fact-checkers around the world. Collaboration is key to stopping lies, and this year we have made a global alliance: more than 100 verifiers in 70 countries speaking 45 different languages have managed to debunk more than 9000 hoaxes (and we have been nominated for the Nobel Prize!). If you want to dive into the data, you have it all here.

At the beginning of the pandemic, when the first wave was hitting countries like Spain, France, or Italy hard, Maldita.es and four other European fact-checking media joined forces to analyze whether the wave of infodemia was crossing borders. In the report COVID-19 Infodemic in Europe: a visual analysis of disinformation conducted by Maldita.es in Spain, Agence France-Presse (AFP) in France, CORRECTIV in Germany, Pagella Politica/Facta in Italy, and Full Fact in the United Kingdom, we examined the articles published by these media during March and April 2020.

Moreover, from Maldita Ciencia to cope with all the disinformation generated by the pandemic, we have signed collaboration agreements with different medical and scientific societies and associations that have participated in the debunking related to this issue.

All this hard work has been recognized: Maldita Ciencia has won the Prismas Award from the Casa de la Ciencia in Coruña and the Concha García Campoy Award from the Television Academy. Additionally, our CEO and co-founder, Clara Jiménez Cruz, received the Madrid Press Association award as young journalist of the year.

BECOME MALDITO, BECOME MALDITA

Do you want to know more about disinformation and verification?

As you know, we are convinced that education is the only vaccine for disinformation, so we want to leave you some of our resources and others to learn together:

Course to combat disinformation on Twitter: Learn to verify in 21 tweets With the support of Twitter Spain, we have prepared a micro-course to learn how to combat disinformation. Organized in 21 tweets and a single thread, you can learn to detect a fake tweet, identify a phishing attempt, and also understand how cognitive biases affect critical thinking (we also have it in English).

A comic with the keys so you don’t get fooled “Héctor Hecho does not share hoaxes” is the title in Spanish of a comic created by the Brazilian fact-checking center Aos Fatos, in association with the International Fact-Checking Network, of the Poynter Institute. The Spanish edition is by Maldita.es and you can download it for free here.

Interland: Be Internet Awesome 

The adventure game, developed by Google, is aimed at younger audiences (7-12 years) who learn to combat the bad behavior of identity impersonators and other users who do not practice healthy digital coexistence. Interland also promotes some basic principles of verification: it encourages checking sources and URLs and reporting inappropriate content.

Crash Course Media Literacy

A series of videos (recommended from secondary school onwards) that address fundamental topics for media literacy (in English).

Additionally, in the EDUCHECK MAP of the International Fact-checking Network, you can find more resources in other languages.

To close, always the maldito team

Rocío Benavente, MALDITA CIENCIA: This year has been the perfect storm for fact-checkers, especially those specialized in science, with health becoming the main protagonist of current affairs and news unfolding at full speed mixed with a heavy load of polarization. As at this moment, we are literally playing with public health, this year has been more important than ever to have clear which information was reliable and which was not, and there we were in Maldita Ciencia trying to lend a hand.

Andrés Jiménez MacKellar, MALDITO BULO: The uncertainty, fear, and lack of answers that we have all felt at some point during this last year have made the hoaxes about COVID-19 continue to circulate since the beginning of the pandemic. At Maldita.es, we have detected more than 1,000 disinformations related to vaccines, supposed methods of preventing contagion, the political management of the pandemic, or even phishing, which would not have been possible if the community had not alerted us to these hoaxes and helped to viralize our debunkings.

Sergio Sangiao, MALDITO DATO: The pandemic caused by the coronavirus has brought a wave of disinformation. From Maldito Dato, we have been scrutinizing Governments and Public Administrations to prevent you from being fooled: verifying what our politicians were saying, checking and analyzing the data to tell you what was happening, and making Transparency requests to reveal what we still did not know. And that’s how we will continue!

Óscar Pandiello, MALDITA TECNOLOGÍA: After a year in which screens have become our window to reality, knowing the ins and outs, dangers, and latest news related to the digital world has become a necessity. Issues such as privacy and the protection of our personal data, the normalization of artificial intelligence, or the stress derived from excessive use of technological devices concern us, and therefore, we will continue working to make the digital world more accessible to you every day.

Nacho Calle, SUBDIRECTOR DE MALDITA.ES: Facts and verified data. More than ever, in these last months, we all needed facts and verified data. We needed to know what was happening, what information our leaders had, and if what they were telling us was true. It has been a marathon and at Maldita.es we have put all our efforts into explaining what was happening around us, putting into context the figures and details of a global problem like the coronavirus pandemic, and demanding public information that was not being offered transparently. A year in which verification has been established as the best tool to prevent us from being fooled. Not even in extraordinary situations. Not even in a pandemic.

David Fernández, JEFE DE INGENIERÍA: If there has ever been a moment when technology has been important in our life, it was during the year 2020. We replaced hugging our family and friends with seeing them through a screen, we stopped going to the office window to process everything with our digital certificate, we lost the five minutes of morning coffee with our coworkers to start talking to them through WhatsApp, Telegram, or Slack. In short, machines replacing what was once a more human contact.

In times of turmoil, technology can help us with many things: to be closer to our loved ones, to allow us to carry out necessary procedures… To be better informed. And that is what we try to do at Maldita.es: not only prevent you from being fooled but also give you simple tools to use so that checking whether something is false or not is as easy as possible. Our WhatsApp bot or our browser extension are examples. And it’s something we worked hard on last year and will continue to work on this year (and the next, and the next, and the next…).

Beatriz Lara, MALDITA COMUNIDAD: This has been the year when disinformation has spread with more force and speed due to the coronavirus pandemic, but it has also been the year when our work fighting against disinformation has had the most impact: millions of people around the world have read and shared our verifications. A job that would not have been possible without our community, which is growing every day. During 2020, more and more malditos have helped us by lending us their superpowers, contributing economically so that Maldita.es can grow and be stronger, reach further and faster in the fight against disinformation; reading our newsletters, watching our Twitch and participating in our workshops to learn how to debunk hoaxes themselves. Without them, none of this would have been possible, and they have shown us that together it is much more difficult for us to be fooled.

Stéphane M. Grueso MALDITA EDUCA: This year has been a challenge. We have given more talks and training sessions than ever in a very complicated context where disinformation can literally kill you. In short, I think that in Maldita Educa we have learned more than we have taught. Disinformation seems to have come to stay. At Maldita.es we are willing to fight against it with all our strength and offer you tools so that you can do it too.

Pablo Hernández, INVESTIGACIÓN ACADÉMICA: For us, this has been a memorable year because it is our birth year. We arrived with many challenges ahead and much to learn hand in hand with academics who study disinformation. This year we have been very attentive to their research on the infodemic, that avalanche of hoaxes related to COVID-19.

Carlos Hernández-Echevarría, POLÍTICAS PÚBLICAS Y DESARROLLO INSTITUCIONAL: The pandemic has brought an unprecedented wave of hoaxes that has forced us to explain better what we do. It has highlighted the importance of Maldita.es’s work and has given us the opportunity to help many institutions better understand how disinformation works and what they can do to help in the fight against it.

Thank you all for being there one more year!

Remember, today we meet at Maldita Twitchería, https://www.twitch.tv/malditaes, at 1 pm (CET), to continue celebrating International Fact-Checking Day!

On our WhatsApp chatbot, we are always vigilant: write to us at +34 644 22 93 19 and ask us if something that has reached you is or is not a hoax.