Revision [13416]
This is an old revision of FactcheckingData made by KristenVicedomini on 2015-01-27 12:21:25.
Factchecking Data
Factchecking data is an additional layer of context we add to our Public Statements, meant to measure a politician's honesty. This data is featured in the Political Galaxy app along with Statements.
Factchecking Data Standards
Scope of Coverage
Statements: all those statements for which a public record can be found, and otherwise meets our criteria for speech collection (including the offices and jurisdictions covered). If not already in our public statements database, these statements should be added.
Fact Checking reports: if a report analyzes a politician's honesty in a statement, and that statement meets our criteria for statements, the report will generally be included. Therefore we would exclude:
- reports relating to a statement that doesn't meet our criteria for our inclusion
- reports that solely analyze the consistency of a candidate's position ("flip-flopping"), campaign promise fulfillment, or anything other than the truthfulness of a statement
Data Sources
The factchecking data (the judgement and analysis of evidence) is sourced from external data partners. As of January 2015 this includes the two most-prominent, independent, nonpartisan groups: Factcheck.org and Politifact
This factchecking data is than associated with Project Vote Smart's Public Statements database ("the evidence being evaluated)
Expected Frequency of Updates
Quarterly
Key Tasks
The key task is to associate the following content:
- the evidence being evaluated (Vote Smart's public statements)
- the judgment of the evidence made by a fact checker (see: data sources)
- the analysis of the evidence by the fact checker
To associate factchecking data to statements:
- evaluate if the report meets our criteria for inclusion
- Find the quote being evaluated in Vote Smart's Public Statements database. Add the public statement if necessary.
- Relate the public statement to the factchecking article in accordance with current procedure
Special situations:
- a report evaluating a statement by Candidate A about something Candidate B said should not be related to Candidate B but should be related to Candidate A
Management of Factchecking Updates
Pace Estimates (for associating factchecking data to public statements):
beginners: recorded at 16-28 factchecking articles/hour using spreadsheet imports (sample size of 2 staff members; this includes approximately 50% of those articles marked "intentionally blank" because they were not factchecking federal active officials)
API/Display in Galaxy
As of 2014, the following content is fed through the public statements call of Version 2 of the API to the Galaxy app:
factchecking entries have links and their ruling (note: this was likely changed to questionable flag).
Example snippet :
"factchecks": [
{
"http://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/whoppers-of-2012-final-edition/",
"http://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/dubious-denver-debate-declarations/",
"ruling": "mostly false + some context"
},Our intention is to highlight the statements made by a candidate that were determined to be questionable or some degree of false. So, claims that were determined to be true would be excluded from the current display.
