Defending fact-checking partnerships with platform companies: ‘We can't fight alone against disinformation’

Farkas, J., & Bengtsson, M. (2026). Defending fact-checking partnerships with platform companies: ‘We can’t fight alone against disinformation’. European Journal of Communication. https://doi.org/10.1177/02673231261422085

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Summary

This article investigates how professional fact-checkers in Europe rhetorically justify their funding and collaborative ties to major platform companies such as Meta, Alphabet, and ByteDance. Drawing on 12 qualitative interviews with fact-checkers spanning 12 European countries, Farkas and Bengtsson apply rhetorical apologia theory to reveal a set of recurring justificatory arguments. They argue that fact-checkers deploy predominantly defensive rhetoric — four modes of differentiation and three modes of transcendence — to assert editorial independence and legitimise platform partnerships while simultaneously acknowledging their risks. The paper frames fact-checking as an emergent epistemic institution whose legitimacy is negotiated rhetorically rather than through formal credentialing, particularly in the contested terrain of platform dependency.

Key Contributions

• First application of rhetorical apologia theory (Ware and Linkugel) to fact-checkers’ defences of platform partnerships, complementing prior boundary-work scholarship.
• Provides a typology of four differentiation modes plus three transcendence modes for analysing fact-checkers’ justificatory rhetoric.
• Addresses the underexamined European context of fact-checking, which has received less attention than North America despite hosting more institutions.
• Extends prior work on fact-checkers’ internal boundaries by focusing on external boundaries between fact-checkers and platform companies — and between different platform actors.
• Adapts apologia theory from strategic public defences of past actions to ongoing institutional relationships surfaced in qualitative interviews.

Methods

The study rests on 12 semi-structured interviews (averaging 71 minutes) with fact-checkers from 12 organisations across 12 European countries, conducted November 2023–March 2024. Interviews covered six themes including organisational structure, audience, societal role, editorial independence, challenges, and platform companies. Analysis followed a four-phase qualitative coding process in NVivo — inductive theme identification, coding, theoretical application of the apologia framework, and grouping of quotes by rhetorical defence type. All interviewees and organisational details were anonymised to protect partnerships and prevent targeted harassment.

Findings

• Four modes of differentiation: (D1) from platform companies (asserting editorial independence), (D2) between platforms (e.g., defending Meta ties by rejecting TikTok/ByteDance), (D3) within platforms (distinguishing well-intentioned employees from corporate motives), and (D4) from the state (framing platform funding as less compromising than government funding).
• Three modes of transcendence: (T1) invoking a counterfactual worse reality without fact-checking, (T2) appealing to the broad alliances needed against disinformation, and (T3) framing collaboration as a means of improving platforms from within.
• All 12 organisations received funding from at least one major platform company between 2021 and early 2024 — most commonly Meta (9), Alphabet (8), ByteDance (2), Twitter (2), and Spotify (2).
• Fact-checkers report frequent accusations of censorship, bias, and collusion, especially from far-right actors, who cite platform funding as “evidence” of wrongdoing.
• Disagreement over acceptable funders (TikTok, the state) reveals inconsistent and contested rhetorical boundaries across an emergent field.

Connections

This paper sits within the broader information-disorder and platform-governance literature on how anti-disinformation institutions and their independence are contested. It connects to work on the political and legal targeting of researchers and fact-checkers under similar pressures, such as Copland2025-em and Starbird2025-jj, and to platform-governance analyses of data access and institutional dependence like Rieder2025-ju and Rieder2026-pp. Its focus on the effectiveness and framing of fact-checking as an epistemic practice also relates to Cazzamatta2026-lo.

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