Archiving the content we check: How we are working with others to support the infrastructure for international fact checking.

Full Fact and our Spanish partners at Fundación Maldita.es have recently taken on the running of the MediaVault project, an important part of the plumbing that will ensure fact checkers around the world can continue to identify and address false and misleading visual content on social media as quickly and easily as possible

MediaVault preserves images and videos that circulate online. In doing so it addresses a persistent problem where content is edited or vanishes from the web creating broken links in fact checks and potential confusion to our readers. Think of it as a long term way of us always being able to capture a snap shot of social media as it was when we checked it. In turn, that allows us to create a searchable database for fact checkers and other journalists to find out if images have already been checked when they are writing articles.

Since being created by the brilliant team at the Duke Reporters Lab in 2023, the Vault has become an essential resource for media and digital professionals working to verify content online. We believe it is the first archiving system designed specifically for the needs of fact checking organisations. In recent weeks, we have worked with engineers in the US to transfer the project to Europe and ensure this vital part of our work has a new long term home.

The system gathers and organizes images and videos analyzed by an international network of around 900 individual fact checkers and researchers. The database allows precise searches, helps identify previously debunked content, and supports academic and journalistic research on the dynamics of visual disinformation. It uses a form of structured markup called MediaReview to ensure this information is as consistent and well structured as possible.

MediaVault remains free to access for fact-checkers, journalists, technologists, and researchers who register on the platform.

As fact checkers with a history of collaboration we feel it makes sense for us to undertake this project with our colleagues at Maldita. We have worked together for years and our technical projects include recent work to identify narratives within short form video across Europe. Something we are calling Prebunking at Scale. More importantly, as two established organisations working in a world where funding for fact checking is more and more uncertain we feel a duty to support the collaborative efforts of fact checking.

Alongside the MediaVault project, we have also given a new home to the long running Fact Check insights project. This is the exhaustive list of content created using the ClaimReview standard and likely constitutes the largest and most successful structured data journalism project ever created. This is available to verified researchers who successfully complete an online application process.

All of this is a reminder that fact checking is a world born from collaboration. We worked together as a collective to define the standards of what constitutes an independent fact checker, now enshrined in the International Fact Checking Network code. We work every day with 50+ fact checkers across Europe as part of our role in the European Fact Checking Standards Network and our work in producing AI tools has allowed us to support fact checkers and small media organisations around the world, working in some of the most complex and challenging information environments on the planet.

We undertake this because of a shared belief in high standards and a hope that it is possible to expect a better way of consuming information online. The MediaVault is not a glamorous project, but it is a great example of what our world so often looks like. Smart people, working together, sharing technology and supporting each other to quietly make things better.

Over the coming weeks and months we will continue to not just host the MediaVault, but support its evolution to continue to meet the needs of our users. As funding pressures intensify, we are determined to showcase our shared commitment to supporting fact checkers, wherever they are.