O fact-checking no combate à desinformação: um estudo de caso da Agência Lupa e suas estratégias para a retomada da verdade factual

Abstract

Fact-checking is emerging as a Journalism practice in the disinformation scenario. The current informational chaos is favored by countless factors like the intense mediatization in society and the active role of the user that also places himself as a sender and its implications, but mostly by the rising of a platform capitalism and the business model imposed by digital platforms. Furthermore, the downfall of Journalism adds to the scenario with the change of its environment and the growing damage to the institution’s credibility. In this master’s thesis we aim to comprehend how fact-checking inserts itself in the setting built by platform capitalism and informational chaos and, more specifically, analyze how Agência Lupa seeks to fight disinformation through fact-checking. The main objective of the case study is to verify how Agência Lupa acts in the fight of disinformation by analyzing its practice of fact-checking and production of different projects and formats in 2020 in order to reflect on the potentials and limitations of the fact-checking practice in search of the strengthening of factual truth. To that end, we use methodological triangulation and based ourselves on authors with different perspectives (Graves, Amazeen, Dobbs, Uscinski, Butler, Albuquerque and Lelo) to build an ample vision of the subject. We point out, lastly, the importance of efforts like fact-checking to establish a counterpoint to disinformation and to value some journalistic practices. However, we also underscore the structural limitations of the production and the instrumentalization of the format by social platforms.