Fact-checking: tools, tricks and pitfalls - Joscha Weber in a guest lecture

Real or fake? Every day, hundreds of pieces of content rush through our social media feeds and influence our view of the world. But not everything is real, authentic or up-to-date. Some of what we see is deliberately manipulated, misleading, mistakenly shared as real or made up. One way to maintain an overview is fact-checking. This journalistic practice combines various disciplines of technical and content verification and is more important today than ever before. This is because fake images and videos now spread at breakneck speed and often have an audience of millions on social media thanks to high-reach accounts. In addition, AI programs have drastically facilitated and improved the creation of fake content.

What does this mean for our perception of reality? And what does this mean for journalism? In his lecture, Joscha Weber, founder and head of the fact-checking team at Deutsche Welle, will provide insights into the work of professionals in the verification of media content. The lecture is part of the Research and Verification module for the Technical Journalism and Visual Technical Communication courses, but is open to all interested parties. Based on the mindset of journalists, whose professional self-image includes the verification of information, Joscha Weber shows possibilities and tools how professionals unmask fakes.

He himself developed and moderates the fact-checking video formats for online, TV and social media at Deutsche Welle. He is also a trainer for fact-checking and digital research. He previously studied communication, politics and history in Münster and Aix-en-Provence, worked for WDR and dpa, among others, completed a traineeship at DW and headed the digital section of the DW sports desk for eight years.