A study by leading disinformation scholars found that traditional fact-checking efforts alone cannot stop fake news. That's why #PakCheck innovated fact-checking by using Gen Z style and language.
#PakCheck is a project by e-Boto, the country’s first and only e-democracy website for citizen engagement. e-Boto strives to keep its content informative but also relatable and entertaining. Quirky and colorful graphics, as well as TikTok-style videos, ensure that e-Boto’s fact check materials are easily digestible and creatively communicated.
“We launched #PakCheck to fight the spread of disinformation and misinformation on social media, as well as to promote citizen participation in keeping our online spaces democratic,” said Gian Paolo Pangan, President of Pinas Forward, the non-partisan organization behind e-Boto.
The initiative is a crowdsourced venture, true to Pinas Forward’s focus on citizen participation. Behind every #PakCheck article and video are youth volunteers who work with e-Boto researchers to write articles. These volunteers were trained in a series of fact-checking and media literacy workshops by Pinas Forward. To date, the movement has trained 2,800 volunteer fact-checkers across 178 schools nationwide.
One of Pinas Forward’s partners for the endeavor is Tsek.ph, the country’s first fact-checking collaboration made up of members of the academe, media, and civil society, which was launched in 2019 to curb election-related misinformation. Pinas Forward researchers and writers also underwent trainings by the ASEAN Foundation, Google.org, and Break the Fake Movement.
