Abstract

This ethnographic study provides insights into how professional fact checkers at a major bureau are experiencing and responding to the emergence of generative AI technologies and the shift towards digital investigation amid funding cuts. We started the work in 2022, where we interviewed 35 fact checkers and editors through innovative and traditional ethnographic methods. Over two years and three field visits, we developed nuanced relationships with participants who shared their professional practices and personal concerns about navigating a changing AI and misinformation landscape. With shifting priorities from Meta and uncertainty about fact checking’s future, we find that professional fact checkers are being forced to redefine their attitudes towards both fact checking and AI technologies in an increasingly automated (mis)information ecosystem. In this chapter we present an argument for recognising this shift as not just a funding problem, but a fundamental challenge to the institutional role of professional verification in democratic discourse.