First insight report of teyit.org has been published regarding the suspicious contents that users send to us in the last year. Entitled “What do we doubt on the web?” and prepared by the data of 7,628 text messages that followers of teyit.org sent because of their unsureness for the truth of the news and their requests for receiving the truth.
Politics has the biggest share in the pool of verification requests
The report includes basis insights about what kind of claims or contents the users doubt on the web and what media they use for delivering the contents they doubt.
- Within a year, 7,628 messages sent to teyit.org while 3,820 singular suspect content was reported.
- In total, 5,652 people sent messages to teyit.org, whereas the number of the people who sent doubtful contents at least twice, is 1,119.
- During the last year, the busiest month was July 2017 with 999 verification requests sent by teyit.org‘s followers. Proportioned by the number of the followers, the busiest month was December 2016 with 794 requests.
- The verification requests sent to teyit.org are listed under 17 headings according to the guidelines provided by International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC).
- 16.12% of the reports sent to teyit.org were concluded and published on teyit.org website or on social media. 64.5% of the reports were not published due to lack of sufficient information, lack of reliable information or lack of further proofs from news sites. 8.36% of them were excluded from analysis as they did not conform to the publishing policy and methodology of teyit.org. 10.76% of them were archived based on their importance, urgency and virality priorities.
- When the distribution of the doubtful contents sent to teyit.org is considered according to the topics, “Politics” has the biggest share with 51 percent. It is followed by “Education” with 6.78 percent, “Crisis” with 6.27 percent and “Urban-Environment” with 6.20 percent.
- 42.11 percent of the type of doubtful contents sent to teyit.org is visual such as videos, images, and memes.
Further, the report provides answers to the question why a greater amount of misinformation and doubtful content circulate in times of crises and it keeps track of the effects of polarization and daily anxieties on the consumption of the news.
These insights prepared based on a year of experience gained by the editors of teyit.org will be useful for the relevant civil society organizations, public authorities, international organizations, media organizations and to all other institutions that have focused on the web as an indispensable part of their communication strategy.
The PDF version of the report is available here.
