Fact-Checking

This volume explores the evolving landscape of misinformation, disinformation, fake news and fact-checking in the media and the public domain. It highlights the prominence misinformation poses to society tracing its relationship with weakening institutions and assaults on freedom of the press and academic freedom.

Organized into four thematic dimensions—fact-checking institutions, practices, publics, and algorithms, the book offers a comprehensive overview of the field’s development. The concluding chapter reflects on recent disruptions, including the current shift from professional fact-checkers toward community-based moderation, raising urgent questions about platform governance. It outlines a forward-looking agenda focused on three key actors—platform companies, professional fact-checkers, and publics.

This collection brings together essays and research published in Digital Journalism with a new introductory and concluding chapter. It is essential reading for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers navigating the complex intersections of fact-checking and misinformation in the digital age.

Oscar Westlund (PhD) is a Professor at Oslo Metropolitan University since 2018, where he co-leads the OsloMet Digital Journalism Research Group and has institutionalized its OsloMet DJRG fellowship that has attracted more than 30 fellows from all over the world. Westlund is the Editor-in-Chief of Digital Journalism (since 2018), an internationally leading journal in communication for which he has introduced several new article formats. He has authored and edited multiple books, as well as 100+ articles, chapters and reports. His award-winning research focuses on journalism, social media, mobile media, misinformation, fact-checking as well as media- and information literacy. Westlund has worked at several renowned universities in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. He was a visiting scholar RISJ at University of Oxford in 2011, and acts as the Sweden representative for the annual RISJ Digital News Report project. Westlund and his colleagues have been awarded and carried out research projects granted by national research councils in Norway, Sweden, Spain and Singapore. Westlund has worked as a research leader at the Government Offices of Sweden and served several EU inquiries. In 2026 he is a visiting professor at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology (PJAIT) and a faculty associate at the Public Tech Media Lab at University of Wisconsin. Westlund continues to serve as chair of the advisory board for the Nordic Observatory for Digital Media and Information Disorder (NORDIS) since 2021. NORDIS is an independent non-partisan multidisciplinary hub for the EU Digital Media Observatory.