Full Fact’s Research

Knowing what is accurate is half the fight against bad information. We also need to understand how falsehoods travel, how beliefs are formed, and what interventions fact checkers can use to be most effective.

Researchers at Full Fact work to unearth this evidence and make it useful: to fact checkers, to journalists, and the public. 

Bad information and the public

The fight for good information starts with the news we follow, the topics we engage with, and the people and institutions we place our trust in.

Understanding belief

Belief in misinformation is a complex process shaped by age, education, psychology and social identity.

Improving our fact checks

Fact checkers can use insights from the social sciences to make their work more visible, more memorable, and more inclusive.

Briefings

• Does the “backfire effect” exist—and does it matter for fact checkers?
• How well do we understand economic terms?
• Political trust in the UK
• Fact checking in the 2019 election: research recommendations - read our checklist for applying these findings

With Africa Check and Chequeado we are producing a series of briefings looking at how research can help people trying to tackle bad information. 

• UK public engagement with politics, information and news. Read the briefings for Argentina, Nigeria and South Africa. 
• Who believes and shares misinformation?
• How to communicate fact checks online
• What is the impact of fact checkers’ work on public figures, institutions and the media?
• Media and information literacy: lessons from around the world
• Health misinformation in Africa, Latin America and the UK: impacts and possible solutions
• Conspiracy beliefs
• Communicating uncertainty
• A check list for fact checkers

You can read more about this programme of work here. 

More research briefings will be coming out during 2020.

For more information on our research work, please contact our Head of Research Amy Sippitt.

Other research work

• 2019 general election research with BritainThinks - mixed-method research on voters' experiences of bad information during the election campaign
• Does fact checking have a women problem? - based on a workshop at the international fact checking summit, Global Fact V, in 2018
• 2017 audience research for Full Fact - with 2,000 self-selecting respondents to an online survey we posted
• The need for fact checking in Britain: What people think about fact checking services - by NatCen Social Research for Full Fact, in 2016