Trust at Imagine Belfast - Fact or Fiction Quiz

Next up we invite you to come join us and @FactCheckNI for a table quiz to learn how separate fact from fiction in Northern Ireland. It’s all taking place at the Oh Yeah Music Centre on Friday 18^th March at 5:30pm.

We’ve all seen it – the incredible ‘news story’ gone viral on Facebook and Twitter, purporting some otherwise unreported atrocity. But who proves it as untrue? And how?

In the pre-Internet era, researchers would scan microfilmed newspapers, review audio and video tapes, check the film negatives. Thanks to Photoshop and instant social media publishing, anyone can initiate their own propaganda with a tap of a button. But online tools also enable anyone to interrogate, and determine rumour from truth.

Fact Check NI will be a platform that promotes a collaborative and bottom-up approach to the political debate, working with members of the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector, community workers, media editors and journalists, politicians and the general public.

They aim to work with as many of the 4,836 voluntary and community sector organisations in NI as possible to identify issues and gather information.

The project will aim to influence public policy in regards to the community and voluntary sector, keep politicians right in terms of both their promises and their rhetoric, and also influence the general public by providing access to non-biased, un-opinionated facts. The project will also encourage newspaper editors to publish corrections after inaccuracies appear in their outlets.

Come and learn what digital fact checking is all about, and how easy and fun it is to discover where some of these whoppers come from.

The project, FactCheck NI, is working to address the issue of false or misleading information in the public domain, through undertaking and publishing high quality research into key issues. We seek to reduce public confusion regarding political issues in Northern Ireland, and to enable citizens to hold public figures, political groups, and the media to account on public statements made.

FactCheck NI is a project led by the Northern Ireland Foundation, in partnership with Transformative Connections and funded by Building Change Trust. 

You can keep up to date with the project on Twitter - @FactCheckNI 

If you’d like to come along, or just to find out more, please click here.