Challenges for Fact-checking: Beyond False/True Verification

Building on seven fundamental theoretical approaches to media influence and people’s behaviour toward information developed between the 1950s and 1980s—Two-Step Flow of Communication, Homophily, Encoding/Decoding, Uses and Gratifications, Arts of Poaching, Agenda-Setting, and Spiral of Silence—this paper puts into perspective the circulation of online content and the underlying mechanisms of disinformation in digital spheres. Our approach seeks to highlight the necessity, for theorists as well as practitioners, to consider fact-checking not only as a “false vs. true” verification mechanism, but as a communication process in and of itself.