Behind the Facts

If needed as a cover photo for the media analysis article

Media analysis: Croatian media spread the news that a local filmmaker Šulina won the Golden Lion award: Lazy journalism or intentional misinformation?

Media analysisBy University of Zagreb, HR February 22, 2021

Croatian media landscape was recently hit by seemingly “great” news about a Croatian amateur film director Mario Šulina winning the prestigious award – Venice Golden Lion. He was awarded for his feature film “Adam” telling the story of a Croatian War Vetaran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Although the news media did not directly say…

Blog: 4 Minutes

BlogpostBy The University of Georgia February 2, 2021

The “online” lecture was supposed to start in 5 minutes, when I accidentally checked news and heard that 4800 cases were reported in the country. I was surprised to enter the lecture while a friend sent me a message on the phone: ‘’Do we have fun somewhere today? I imagined where we could have gone,…

Blog: Facing dilemmas while researching statements about environment and ecology

BlogpostBy Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, SI January 29, 2021

Which tweet to choose? How can we get enough information to be sure of our prediction? And how to simplify complex information? What have we learned? Which tweet to choose? Environment and ecology are very hot topics nowadays. We can see a lot of new research about pollution, global warming and food waste, but because…

Blog: A reflection on factchecking and why everyone should try it

BlogpostBy Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, SI January 21, 2021

In this blog post you will find a reflection on the fact-checking process of four students from the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences. It was a really interesting and new experience to go through and we would surely recommend everyone who is just in the least bit interested in journalism, to go through…

Blog: Translation difficulties or still racism?

BlogpostBy South Ural State University, RU January 13, 2021

The word “negru”, which literally means black in Romanian, was carelessly uttered by football referee Sebastian Coltescu and caused a big scandal as the players left the football field on the fourteenth minute of the PSG-Istanbul match. As it turned out later, the accursed word was uttered not by Coltescu himself, but by his assistant…

Media Analysis: German and Russian media have contrasting views of Navalny case

Media analysisBy Lobachevsky University Russia January 8, 2021

We decided to turn to the media about the versions of what happened on August 20, 2020 with the Russian politician Alexei Navalny. We analyzed articles from reliable sources in Germany and Russia and identified the most common positions in the case of the possible poisoning of Alexei Navalny by Novichok. We found contrasting views.…

Blog: Has Russia imposed retaliatory sanctions against representatives of the German and French leadership because of the Navalny case?

BlogpostBy South Ural State University, RU January 7, 2021

On 12 November 2020 the Russian news agency TASS reported that he Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russian Federation, represented by Sergey Lavrov, the Head of the Ministry, had imposed sanctions against Germany and France because of the case of Alexey Navalny. In this blog we explain how we factchecked this claim to be mostly…

Blog: False information on how some of the food products are dangerous during covid-19 pandemic

BlogpostBy The University of Georgia December 27, 2020

Coronavirus pandemic has been followed by a mass infodemic with several interest groups standing behind it. One of the directions of the infodemic includes false treatments, fake recommendations, and unverified protection methods. In Georgia, even doctors often become the source of such fake information, hazardous to human health. Fake news titled “Everything Will End Fatally:…

Media Analysis: What international media write about specific statements made in the documentary “Francesco”

Media analysisBy Jade Hochschule, University of Applied Sciences, Wilhelmshaven, DE December 18, 2020

With the premiere of the documentary “Francesco” which happened at the Rome Film Festival in October 2020, controversial opinions arose in various media about two certain points in the film. Pope’s statements “homosexual people have a right to be in a family. They are children of God. Nobody should be thrown out or be made…

Blog: How we tried to check yet another pompous claim made by Donald Trump

BlogpostBy Lobachevsky University Russia December 16, 2020

On October 14, 2020, Fox News posted an article with the headline: “Trump and public health system have saved 2 million lives in coronavirus pandemic.” However, this statement raised our doubts and suspicions. Newt Gingrich, the author, did not provide any statistics: there are no illustrations or links. Firstly, we decided to check the statistics:…