Our first step in the fact-checking process was to find the lies. As mentioned previously, the best lies are half-truths that work to support a metanarrative, like “Duterte is the best leader” or “Journalists are criminals.” Step two was to use natural language processing, using computers to process large amounts of text to pull out the consistent messages of networks of disinformation. Doing that led us to step three, which was identifying the websites and other digital assets associated with those networks, including those profiting off the enterprise.
