In audio interview, ICFJ TruthBuzz Fellow discusses misinformation in Brazil

by IJNet
Oct 30, 2018 in Combating Mis- and Disinformation

This week, ICFJ welcomed its first Truthbuzz Fellow, Sérgio Spagnuolo, from Brazil. He spent a few days in the office, preparing for a six-month fellowship working with Brazilian newsrooms to fight against misinformation.

Spagnuolo will work with Brazilian organizations Aos Fatos, a major fact-checking publication, and Folha de São Paulo, one of the country’s largest newspapers, to improve the reach and impact of their existing fact-checking efforts.

“Many news organizations do a great job fact-checking,” said Cassandra Balfour, the program’s manager. “This fellowship is about designing compelling methods to help those fact-checking efforts reach as many people as possible.”   

Spagnuolo sat down for an interview with Oren Levine, ICFJ’s director of innovation, to discuss his previous work, the challenges of fighting misinformation on WhatsApp, solutions he hopes to experiment with and the case he thinks best exemplifies successful fact-checking.

Learn more about Spagnuolo and the Truthbuzz Fellowship on ICFJ's website. You can also follow his work — and the work of future fellows around the world — on Twitter using the tag #Truthbuzz