Locking up misinfo in the Reporters’ Lab vault
New tool quarantines fact-checked social media posts for journalists
By Erica Ryan - December 3, 2024
Fact-checkers around the world now have access to a new tool from the Duke Reporters’ Lab that allows them to save and link to social media posts that have been fact-checked, without boosting traffic to the original creator.
The new feature is part of MediaVault, an archiving platform created by the Reporters’ Lab with support from the Google News Initiative, and it was developed in response to feedback from fact-checkers. In addition to being able to save the social media posts they were fact-checking, journalists said they wanted to be able to link to the content without amplifying it.
Public-facing links are now generated for all social media posts archived in MediaVault, and those links can be used in fact-check articles.
Not only does the tool allow fact-checkers to avoid boosting views for creators of misinformation, it also preserves long-term access to the content. That means there will still be a record of exactly what a post claimed, even if its creator deletes it or the social media platform removes it.
Since the Reporters Lab announced the new feature in late October, MediaVault has seen a significant boost in users, with more than 200 new sign-ups.
Being able to archive social media posts is a problem the fact-checkers at India Today have been struggling with for a long time, says Bal Krishna, who leads the fact-checking team at the news organization. “This is just amazing,” he says of MediaVault.
MediaVault is free for use by fact-checkers, journalists and others working to debunk misinformation shared online, but registration is required.