Six years on: Our stories so far
Since its launch in October 2019, Annie Lab has strived to become Hong Kong’s premier fact-checking initiative, standing at the forefront of the global information disorder in the digital age. As we mark six years of operation, we have decided to reflect on our journey while restructuring our operation over the summer.
Annie Lab was born from news literacy curricula developed in 2012 for journalism courses at the University of Hong Kong, incorporating practical social media verification tools and techniques into subjects such as Online Journalism and Principles of Journalism.
The vision of creating an “on-campus teaching newsroom” that would train the next generation of discerning news audiences and media professionals with fact-checking skills has gone through various iterations since. In 2019, at the height of political turmoil in Hong Kong, when an overwhelming amount of misleading and false narratives began inundating the public information space in the city, Annie Lab began publishing students’ works to differentiate fact-based, authentic news reports from unfounded rumors, unsubstantiated claims, and nonsensical false information.
Becoming a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) in January 2022 marked a significant milestone for us, placing us among the ranks of prestigious international organizations like the Associated Press, Reuters, and the Washington Post. Our investigation into misinformation related to COVID-19 and climate change also gained recognition globally; Annie Lab was invited to become a member of the Vaccine Safety Net by the World Health Organization in 2023.
We analyzed about 480 stories on our website, which constitutes the majority of our work, although not all of our fact-checking stories appear on our website (for some easy debunks, we only post our findings on social media).
Confronting China-related misinformation
Our data reveals that claims relevant to China constitute 211 out of 479 articles, representing 44% of the analyzed output. This proportion reflects both our geographical location and the particular expertise of our student reporters, many of whom are Hong Kong residents and Chinese nationals equipped with the linguistic and cultural knowledge necessary to navigate complex narratives about their country.
Our sentiment analysis shows that, among these China-related stories, 155 articles have addressed misleadingly negative portrayals of China that contain inaccurate information. This represents the misinformation landscape many of our students encounter, largely driven by their monitoring systems tracking English-language content on platforms like X, where false narratives about China frequently circulate and gain traction among international audiences.
Perhaps no single story better illustrates our impact than the story titled “Videos misleadingly link digital payment to China’s social credit system,” which is our most-viewed article in our history. The piece debunked three separate videos on X that falsely claimed China’s digital payment systems were directly linked to the country’s controversial social credit system.
Global operation and impact
While China-related content represents our largest category, our work spans a diverse range of topics and regions (see the chart above). We have investigated misinformation related to health, science, international politics, and various other topics. Our fact-checking has covered everything from manipulated videos of natural disasters to false claims about medical treatments, demonstrating the breadth of misinformation challenges in our interconnected world.
Through the IFCN network, we joined the #CoronaVirusFacts alliance in 2020 and #UkraineFacts alliance in 2022, both international efforts to address information crises during emergencies. The demographic make-up of our students has been diverse as well. Besides students from Hong Kong and mainland China, our reporters came from Afghanistan, Canada, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Macao, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
This demographic advantage has enabled us to identify and debunk misinformation that might otherwise slip past fact-checkers lacking the necessary language skills or cultural context. It also aligns with our core mission as a teaching newsroom with educational components, where every fact-checking process serves as both a lesson in media literacy and a lecture in broader world knowledge.
Platforms: What we monitor
Our data analysis indicates distinct patterns in students’ monitoring systems. X emerges as the dominant platform for false claims, accounting for the largest share of content we’ve investigated. This is not surprising given that the platform is often seen as the biggest source of misinformation among popular platforms, where unverified information can rapidly gain international attention. Facebook represents the second-largest origin of misleading claims in our dataset, while Chinese platforms like Weibo and Douyin also feature prominently.
The presence of multiple YouTube channels and various smaller platforms demonstrates the fragmented, yet connected, nature of today’s information ecosystem, where false narratives can emerge simultaneously across multiple venues in various languages and cross-pollinate between platforms.
Our investigations also revealed multiple instances where established media outlets around the world published unverified content from online sources. For example, a viral video purportedly showing a driving license exam in China or Japan circulated for years (and was mentioned by mainstream media outlets) before we proved the claim to be false – it was actually footage from a driving competition. Another case involved a misuse of old footage showing street protesters in China overturning a police vehicle, which was incorrectly identified as an episode of anti-lockdown demonstrations in Guangzhou in late 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Looking forward
As we enter our seventh year, Annie Lab continues to evolve in response to changing information landscapes. Our recent temporary suspension for newsroom relocation and curriculum redesign reflects our commitment to maintaining the highest standards while adapting to new challenges.
The rise of artificial intelligence-generated content, as evidenced by our recent debunking of AI-generated videos, represents a new frontier in misinformation that will require innovative approaches and enhanced technical capabilities. We will continue to focus on Hong Kong and China-related misinformation amid the growing geopolitical tensions in our region.
Equipping the next generation of our global society with sophisticated skills to identify and investigate false narratives plays a vital role in our educational endeavor. We believe culturally-informed fact-checkers are crucial in maintaining information integrity.
