TruthBuzz: Making the Truth Go Viral

Fake news orbits the planet in an instant on social media. Is the truth keeping pace?

Modeled on the ICFJ Knight Fellowships, the TruthBuzz program will help reporters adopt compelling storytelling methods that improve the reach and impact of fact-checking and help “inoculate” audiences against false or misleading information. Through a collaboration with First Draft News, fellows and their newsroom partners will receive training in fact-checking and verification.

TruthBuzz recruited full-time Fellows to work in newsrooms in four of the world's largest democracies: Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria and the United States. The program is also partnering with Proto in India to investigate the spread of misinformation in that country.

The TruthBuzz initiative aims to improve the reach and influence of the facts by communicating fact-checked information in a compelling, shareable way. It was originally launched as a global contest to find new ways to help verified facts reach the widest possible audience. The winning entries from 2017, which included caricatures of politicians, time-lapse videos and an app modeled on a classic video game, identified novel methods to combat misinformation and share solid and instantly understandable fact-checking.

Future TruthBuzz programs will include research studies of the effectiveness of creative storytelling in making the truth go viral.