Media Matters for Democracy (MMfD) — a digital rights and media literacy nonprofit based in Islamabad, Pakistan — showcased its collaborative digital investigation tool “Facter” at the Digital Rights Asia-Pacific Assembly 2024 (DRAPAC24) on August 18, 2024, in Taipei, Taiwan. The initiative was exhibited to broad regional and international networks of digital rights advocates, journalists, lawyers, strategic thinkers, and media sustainability experts.
The yearly event was organised by EngageMedia, a nonprofit that works in the areas of digital rights, and open and secure technology. DRAPAC24 featured about 34 sessions over the span of two days (August 18 -19) under a variety of formats, including panel discussions, dialogues, design thinking, and tool launch. MMfD displayed Facter under the tool launch category.
The session was led by Usman Shahid and Ayesha Khalid, who lead Facter with a team of three digital investigators, Saira Baig, Huzaifa Baloch, and Shehla Zaib, at MMfD. The launch demonstrated the operations at Facter and how the initiative has been facilitating newsrooms in countering mis-and-disinformation across Pakistan. Facter is currently deployed at 19 regional and international news organisations.
The session opened with a brief introduction to Facter. The leads explained the daily operations at the fact-checking cell, including content monitoring across Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, YouTube, and other social media and online platforms; editorial standards that are followed when picking a piece of information for submission; primary tools used for detecting mis-and-disinformation and establishing the veracity of a claim under investigation; categorisation of misleading content, and more.
The floor was then opened to questions from the participants. The queries revolved mainly around the best practices for fact-checking and how content is monitored and selected for investigation on a day-to-day basis at Facter. The participants inquired about the number of fact-checks delivered to newsrooms to date and whether the information is made publicly available. MMfD responded to the latter with a brief overview of the “Facter Weekly” podcast, in which the team highlights and discusses top five fact-checks from the past week.
Facter has delivered nearly 600 fact-checked pieces of information to newsrooms since its launch in February 2024. More on MMfD’s digital investigation cell can be read here.
