TruthBuzz: The Viral Fact-Checking Contest

Misinformation orbits the planet in an instant on social media. Is the truth keeping pace? We want to make sure it does.

Our inaugural TruthBuzz challenge, supported by Craig Newmark Philanthropies, aimed to find new ways to help verified facts reach the widest possible audience. The competition sought creative solutions that newsrooms can adopt to take fact-checking beyond long-form explanations and bullet points.

A distinguished panel of judges — leaders at digital media companies including Facebook, First Draft News, Fusion Media Group and Google News Lab — selected teams from Argentina, Italy, Georgia and Mexico as the winners. ·

• 1st place ($10,000 prize): Pagella Politica (Italy) created time-lapse videos to evaluate politicians’ claims
• 2nd place ($5,000 prize): Chequeado (Argentina) used humorous animated caricatures to fact-check officials.
• 3rd place ($2,500 prize) (tie): Prometo como Eruviel (a collaboration of 5 Mexican outlets) deployed video, graphics, illustrations and GIFs to verify whether a politician kept his campaign promises.
• 3rd place ($2,500 prize) (tie): ForSet (Georgia) turned the classic Nintendo video game “Duck Hunt" into an engaging fact-checking quiz.

A Council of Europe report on misinformation by First Draft News called TruthBuzz a "hopeful initiative" that is "encouraging people to design fact-checking and debunking formats that are highly engaging and shareable." Our winning project from Mexico was named "Format of the Year" by Poynter's International Fact-Checking Network.

Learn more about the winners and explore the "key ingredients" that can inspire other newsrooms.

One of the TruthBuzz Key Ingredients