Full Fact AI supports African fact checkers in year of elections

Half the world’s population lives in a country that held an election in 2024. Over 70 countries went to the polls, making it the biggest election year in human history and a busy year for fact checkers.

Fact checkers worldwide face the challenge of countering misinformation during elections. What’s less common is access to technology to make their work faster, more efficient and impactful.

Full Fact’s AI tools, developed with support from Google.org, solves these challenges. This year 45 fact checking organisations in 26 countries have used our tools in three languages to scale their work and impact. Fifteen of them are based in Africa and seven of those used Full Fact AI to monitor elections.

Seven African elections supported with Full Fact AI

Fact checkers monitoring elections in South Africa, Namibia, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Algeria and Tunisia faced a dual challenge this year. They needed to monitor vast amounts of information shared across platforms—ranging from radio to social media and podcasts—while ensuring that falsehoods, once debunked, don’t resurface unnoticed. This is where technology became an ally.

Our suite of tools, Full Fact AI, addresses these challenges by complementing—not replacing—the vital work of fact checkers. It empowers them to focus on what they do best: verifying information, sharing accurate findings with affected communities and holding public figures accountable.

Tunisian and Algerian elections

Monitoring a diverse media landscape requires significant resources. It takes time, people and expertise to listen, watch, read and review content across multiple platforms that publish content 24 hours a day.

Full Fact AI significantly reduces the manual effort traditionally required for media monitoring, allowing fact checkers to focus on verifying statements and responding quickly to misinformation.

Our tools supported Algerian fact checkers to fact check important claims on army deployments, election results and trust in state institutions. Tunisian fact checkers relied on the tools to fact check claims about fuel price increases, the bombing of a Beirut airport and pay in the country’s education sector.

“During the presidential elections in Tunisia and Algeria, Full Fact AI proved to be an invaluable tool for our organization, effectively addressing the challenges of fact-checking,” said Rabeb Aloui, director of BN Check. “These tools optimized our human resources, allowing us to focus on our mission of ensuring increased transparency and credibility throughout the electoral periods.”

Live fact checking support in South Africa

Africa Check leveraged Full Fact’s AI transcription tools to monitor and verify statements made during the manifesto launches of South Africa's leading political parties: Rise Mzansi, the Economic Freedom Fighters, the Democratic Alliance and the African National Congress.

“The transcription tools really cut down the time that it usually takes to listen to speeches, transcribe claims and then from there decide what to fact check,” said Cayley Clifford, deputy chief editor at Africa Check.

“With this tool we’re able to really get an idea of what kind of claims and which, if any, were already fact checked and found to be false.”

Repeated falsehoods flagged in Ghana

Repeated falsehoods pose another challenge. Even after a claim is fact checked, it can reappear in different forms. Our tools use AI to identify these recycled falsehoods, so fact checkers can understand where misinformation is being spread and act quickly to address it.

Full Fact AI was used by Fact-Check Ghana, Dubawa Ghana, and GhanaFact who are part of the Ghana Fact-Checking Coalition. The coalition is working with 50 journalists and over 100 media houses in 45 Ghanaian languages to ensure accurate information is shared.

Twenty-five Ghanaian fact checkers were trained and onboarded to the AI fact checking tools, which now monitor 10 local radio stations.

In a two week period, Full Fact AI identified 12 repeats of a false claim that over 5 million students in Ghana have benefited from a free senior high school program on radio, YouTube and Twitter.

“The Full Fact AI platform has been a great resource to the team at Fact-Check Ghana during this election season in Ghana. It can be challenging to track the false and polarising narratives across many media platforms. Sometimes we miss some key issues, especially on the broadcast channels and social media handles,” said Kwaku Krobea Asante, FactCheckGhana programme officer.

“The Ghana Fact-checking Coalition is currently running the 2024 Election Media Situation Room where we are tracking misinformation, disinformation and other polarising narratives. Full Fact AI is one of the tools we are relying on to monitor bad actors on social media.”

Co-intelligence: AI and fact checkers

Next year will see at least 12 elections across Africa, where fact checkers will continue their work to verify statements and debunk harmful falsehoods. 

Full Fact is committed to rolling out access to our AI tools to as many organisations as possible to support efforts to combat misinformation. This technology not only allows fact checkers to scale their reach and impact but also ensures they can respond swiftly without compromising on accuracy.