In #UkraineFacts you can see in which countries each piece of disinformation has been detected and access the fact-checks published by the different verification organizations that have investigated it.
How the idea of creating a collaborative database came about
When the Maldita.es team woke up on February 24 to the news that the Russian invasion of Ukraine had begun, it was easy to predict that it would be accompanied by a wave of disinformation. Attempts to deny victims of the attacks, videos and photos supposedly showing Russian strikes on the Ukrainian population that were not real but created informational chaos: images from the past, from other conflicts, from unrelated events, and even taken from video games.
We had a second intuition: these hoaxes and false claims would not only circulate in Spain, but all over the world. We decided to create a database and give access to the more than 100 fact-checkers worldwide so we could start collaborating.
In crisis situations, we know that disinformation spreads very quickly and that one of the keys is to debunk falsehoods as soon as possible to limit their impact, which is why collaboration among fact-checkers is essential. Three days after the invasion began, the database already had more than 300 entries from fact-checkers in 35 countries, and it keeps growing every minute thanks to contributions from colleagues around the world. This database not only helps us avoid duplicating efforts by investigating the same claims, it also allows us to know when each piece of disinformation started circulating in each country. We are seeing that, unlike during COVID-19, when a piece of disinformation could take weeks to move from one country to another, in this case false claims are going viral in different parts of the world at the same time. Some pieces of disinformation are circulating on the same day in 17 countries simultaneously.
With this database, Maldita.es has developed a map that allows users to access fact-checks of the most viral hoaxes. In #UkraineFacts you can see in which countries each piece of disinformation has been detected and access the fact-checks published by the different verification organizations that have investigated it.
The community of fact-checkers who are signatories of the International Fact-Checking Network Code of Principles will continue to expand this database in the coming days and analyze the data to better understand this wave of disinformation.