Emotional labour of  fact checking in India
Channel: Geomedia Conference 2023
Date: 17/10/2023

Anumita Goswami, doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences (ITC), Tampere University, presented her paper at the 5th Geomedia Conference, 2023. The conference was held between Sept. 20-22, 2023 at Tampere University and was co-organised by Karlstad University, Sweden. 

Anumita's paper examines the relationship between identity formation and emotional labour performed by fact checkers in India. With the rise of disinformation online, fact checking has developed as a new genre in journalism. The resources for the article were gathered by interviewing 12 fact checkers from various fact checking groups. The first section of the analysis focuses on how the perception of a fact checker was formed as a result of these interviews, previous literature on fact checking, fact checking accrediting organisations such as the International Fact checking Network (IFCN), and programmes such as Facebook's Third Party fact checking programme. The second section of the analysis focuses on fact checkers' emotional effort in preserving this perception. This expands on previous study on emotional labour, ghost work, and online abuse of journalists. The study's findings aim to contribute to the literature on the emotional labour of journalism in general, and fact checking in the developing world in particular.