In the closely watched French presidential election that saw president Emmanuel Macron re-elected in a high stakes battle against far-right candidate Marine LePen, Meedan software supported French news distributor Agence France Presse (AFP) on fact-checking initiatives in the country.
Misinformation about the election targeted the candidates, as well as the country’s broader voting system and hot button issues like migration and the war in Ukraine, according to news reports. Meedan worked with AFP’s fact-checking unit to build infrastructure across multiple social media platforms to monitor and debunk false and misleading claims surrounding the race.
The global news service used Meedan’s Check software to bring in claims from Facebook Messenger, Twitter and WhatsApp, debunk them, and then send them back out to social media users.
In total, the project brought in more than 2,000 conversations between social media users and AFP journalists, and led to more than 900 fact-checks published to audiences.
Meedan works with AFP on elections in five markets: Brazil, India, France, Germany and Mexico.
