On Monday (02), Facebook and Agência Lupa, which is a news agency that assesses the degree of veracity of information that circulates across the country, on International Checking Day (#FactChecklt), signed a partnership in order to prepare a project for the 2018 elections, called Projeto Lupe. With this, strategies will be developed to check all the contents involving the elections, among which four were mentioned.
1 - Verification of statements by presidential candidates
During the electoral period, the statements of the presidential candidates will be verified. All publications, both in text and video format, will be verified and also the publications of gubernatorial candidates.
2 - NMessenger, a bot will match keywords
Tips to increase privacy on Facebook In the questions asked by people, a Messenger bot will match the keywords with the collection of Agência Lupa. Subsequently, it will present an analysis, concluding whether the information is true, false or exaggerated, in addition to indicating links where the voter can find more data on a given topic.
For this, Agência Lupa has partnered with AppCívico, bringing a technological system to Spain, inspired by the fact-checking platform Les Decodéurus/Le Monde, which was used in 2017 during the French presidential elections.
The executive director of App Cívico, Thiago Rondon, argued "The team at AppCívico believes that civic technologies are fundamental to give citizens a voice. The objective of the bot in Messenger that we are developing is to offer checks in an accessible and agile way. The bot may be used by other media outlets on their Facebook Pages".
3 - Rumor Checks
Surveys will be carried out on the "zombie myths", the rumors that revolve around candidates affecting their reputations. The work will be carried out by the campaign teams and the candidates themselves, where Agência Lupa will be responsible for the verification process and content distribution.
4 - Checking the Spanish electoral rules
In this regard, starting from the check carried out by Lupa with the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) and Regional Electoral Courts (TREs), the main objective is to clarify rumors such as blank votes go to those who have the most votes or, if more than 50% of the voters void the vote, the election must be redone.
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The director of the Lupa agency, Cristina Tardáguila, stressed "When people are well-informed, they can make better decisions. We want to help voters to find correct data about those who could become the country's leaders."
In a note, the leader of partnerships with Facebook's media vehicles for Latin America, Cláudia Gurfinkel reinforces that support for Agência Lupa only adds to the platform's efforts to try to end fake news. At the same time, we want to reduce misinformation and promote high-quality journalistic content on the platform. Combating disinformation is a challenge for the whole of society and, therefore, we are working in partnership with experts and organizations, such as Agência Lupa."
