Verification under uncertainty: community practices and misinformation in Lebanon and Iraq

This article examines verification as a community-based practice shaped by sustained political and informational uncertainty. Drawing on a qualitative comparative case study of Lebanon and Iraq, it revisits dominant approaches to misinformation that prioritize attribution, platforms, and institutional interventions. It argues that verification is produced through relational trust, collective judgement, and situated interpretive practices within fragile yet active journalism ecosystems. The article analyses misinformation episodes linked to war, border escalation, gendered disinformation, and AI-generated media, alongside observational material from a cross-contextual gathering of journalists and community practitioners. Findings demonstrate that in contexts of conflict and electoral volatility, misinformation is not an exception but a feature of everyday circulation, driven by urgency and proximity rather than clear intent. Consequently, verification functions not as a technical correction of falsehoods, but as a distributed social process oriented towards navigating risk. By centring community responses in Lebanon and Iraq, the article reframes verification and media literacy as collective infrastructures necessary for sustaining credibility under accelerating political and technological pressure.