From Movement to Institution: The "Global Fact" Summit as a Field-Configuring Event

Lucas Graves; Laurens Lauer

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11154

Authors

Lucas Graves School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin–Madison http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2980-7145
Lucas Graves is Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who studies how news and news organizations are changing in the contemporary media ecosystem. Dr Graves has been at the forefront of research on the fact-checking movement in the United States and around the world. His book Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism came out in 2016 from Columbia University Press. His work has appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, the Nieman Journalism Lab, and The New York Times as well as prominent academic journals. Between 2017 and 2019 Dr Graves was Senior Research Fellow and Acting Head of Research at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford
Laurens Lauer Institute of Sociology, University Duisburg-Essen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9550-812X
Laurens Lauer is a researcher with a focus on global and comparative studies of new media phenomena at the Institute of Sociology, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. His dissertations focuses on the worldwide spread of political fact-checking initiatives. In this context, he studied six fact-checking organizations in four countries and analyzed their embeddedness in different media-political environments

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11154

Keywords:

fact-checking, institutional fields, journalism

Abstract

The last decade has seen the rise of a self-described worldwide "movement" of fact-checking groups which specialize in debunking false political claims and other forms of misinformation. This very heterogeneous movement now spans nearly 300 fact-checking outlets in more than eighty countries, led by their own professional organization. This study charts the emergence and development of this transnational institutional sphere with qualitative and quantitative analysis of the annual summit of fact-checking organizations, Global Fact, as a field-configuring event (Lampel & Meyer, 2008). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork by two authors as well as comprehensive data on the first six Global Fact meetings, we use shifts in the structure and content of the event to explore processes of structuration; we highlight a shift from a field-building ethic valuing inclusiveness and celebrating diversity to one valuing common practices and standards, marked by new governance mechanisms and increasing interest from powerful outside stakeholders. Ultimately, our data show the fact-checking field negotiating a necessary tension between managing internal diversity and consolidating as an increasingly recognized institutional actor in the domain of public communication.

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From Movement to Institution: The "Global Fact" Summit as a Field-Configuring Event

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