Abstract
Automated fact-checking is often presented as an epistemic tool that fact-checkers, social media consumers, and other stakeholders can use to fight misinformation. Nevertheless, few papers thoroughly discuss how. We document this by analysing 100 highly-cited papers, and annotating epistemic elements related to intended use, i.e., means, ends, and stakeholders. We find that narratives leaving out some of these aspects are common, that many papers propose inconsistent means and ends, and that the feasibility of suggested strategies rarely has empirical backing. We argue that this vagueness actively hinders the technology from reaching its goals, as it encourages overclaiming, limits criticism, and prevents stakeholder feedback. Accordingly, we provide several recommendations for thinking and writing about the use of fact-checking artefacts.- Anthology ID:
- 2023.findings-emnlp.577
- Volume:
- Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023
- Month:
- December
- Year:
- 2023
- Address:
- Singapore
- Editors:
- Houda Bouamor, Juan Pino, Kalika Bali
- Venue:
- Findings
- SIG:
- Publisher:
- Association for Computational Linguistics
- Note:
- Pages:
- 8618–8642
- Language:
- URL:
- https://aclanthology.org/2023.findings-emnlp.577
- DOI:
- 10.18653/v1/2023.findings-emnlp.577
- Cite (ACL):
- Michael Schlichtkrull, Nedjma Ousidhoum, and Andreas Vlachos. 2023. The Intended Uses of Automated Fact-Checking Artefacts: Why, How and Who. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023, pages 8618–8642, Singapore. Association for Computational Linguistics.
- Cite (Informal):
- The Intended Uses of Automated Fact-Checking Artefacts: Why, How and Who (Schlichtkrull et al., Findings 2023)
- PDF:
- https://preview.aclanthology.org/emnlp22-frontmatter/2023.findings-emnlp.577.pdf