Verificado 2018 was a collaboration between Mexican media aiming to work together to limit the impact of viral misinformation in the run up to and during Mexico's 2018 national elections.Â
Co-founded by Pop-Up Newsroom, AJ+ Español and Animal PolÃtico, Verificado 2018 grew to a coalition of over 90 partners, including national and local news outlets, civil society organizations and universities, who worked together to find and investigate content on digital platforms, fact check candidates, and publish credible, well-sourced content.
Meedan’s Check was used as the central workbench for gathering and investigating content for the project. Check allowed the teams to work together on the process of curating content, and going through a shared, structured verification and annotation process, before assigning a status like "Verdadero" (True), "Falso" (False) or "Engañoso" (Misleading). Check thus plays the role of project database, containing all the links, claims, memes and content investigated by the project - this is useful because it ensures that there is no duplication of work, important to avoid when dealing with hundreds of claims with limited capacity.
