Myth Detector (www.mythdetector.ge) is a fact checking portal of Media Development Foundation (MDF), which aims to contribute to the identification of fake news and communication of reliable information by means of fact-checking and raising the level of media literacy.
Media Development Foundation examines manipulative media content from various directions:
- Information influence activities by foreign country (direct propaganda by Russian government sponsored media and indirect anti-Western propaganda by cloaked media outlets);
- Domestic political propaganda (use of trolls and fake pages in social media for political purposes);
- Spread of false information for economic purposes (click bait web-pages).
To reveal information influence activities of foreign countries as well as misinformation activities of local actors, the MDF applies an approach consisting of the following four steps:
- Identify. Media monitoring is conducted to study anti-Western messages, sources of these messages, framing of narratives and to understand a broader context. Moreover, the monitoring enables to identify content that is either fake or manipulative.
- Deconstruct. Fake or manipulative content is checked and real facts are established through open sources and transparent methodology.
- Study into transparency of sources. Transparency of sources means establishing formal or informal owner of a media outlet, studying its financial transparency and informing society about the reliability of a news source.
- Explain. Informing society about propaganda methods and techniques used in spreading fake news intentionally by an interested party in order to harm society. Media literacy enhances resistance of society, enabling citizens to identify and filter out fake news and making them less vulnerable to such information.
The webpage is quadrilingual, publishing information in Georgian and English regularly and in Armenian and Azerbaijani periodically to duly inform minorities living in Georgia.
The project is supported by the US Embassy in Georgia, the East-West Management Institute (EWMI), the Open Society Foundation and DW Akademie.
Since 2016, the MDF has been cooperating with the EU strategic communications service. The Myth Detector fact-checking web-page is a partner of DisinfoPortal, an online platform of the Atlantic Council.