Sometimes presenting facts alone will not cut it. Especially in times when people are afraid and anxious facts don’t seem as relevant to people as before. People grasp onto any information that might make them feel comfortable or offer simple explanations or solutions to complicated situations. This is one of the reasons why fake remedies and cures are widely spread, or why people start to hoard toilet paper after watching videos of empty shelves in supermarkets. Whether these articles or images are true or not doesn’t really matter, they look and sound believable and promote strong emotions of fair, panic, and urgency, but also offer safety, comfort and opportunity. People get the feeling that they have to act and that they are able to act. They are not the victims of a crisis anymore.

Debunking these false pieces of information is important, but is not the solution to everything. If you debunk a piece of false information (like a fake remedy) and simply tell people that they are wrong you will probably not make the impression you hoped for. People will probably disregard your factual information because it is not the fix for their anxiety they hoped for. It doesn’t provide a solution to their needs. But if we use credibility, logic and emotion in our fact checking efforts, we might have a chance.

We can make our reporting more impactful by using the following elements:

• A credible source: a person the audience trusts.
• A logical approach: presenting new knowledge, skills or attitudes in a way the audience recognises and understands.
• Emotional appeal: the use of emotion to encourage their new knowledge, skills or attitudes.

Once you have finished this unit, you should be able to:

• value to evaluate the logic of your audience as a starting point for more effective reporting;
• appreciate to continuously evaluate credible sources of your audience in the light of who they trust;
• value the fact checkers checklist to prevent spreading myths and false narratives;
• predict what the audience will believe and their underlying emotion after applying fact checking before reporting;
• be aware of the risks of ‘people like us’ and ‘celebrities’ spreading false information;
• know how to spot fake or unreliable scientific claims during COVID-19;
• value using credible ‘people like us’ & ‘celebrities’ for factual, responsible & ethical reporting;
• speak the language of our audiences, understand their logic and use it as a starting point.