True To Our Words (Round 4)
Summary
The project will capture statements made by public figures from a range of online sources and map them against current issues, news events and factual information to test the truthfulness of their words. It gives readers a mechanism to evaluate their behaviour and hold them to account.
The solution
Public figures like politicians and business leaders make statements and promises daily, but sometimes they don't stand up to scrutiny. The project seeks to measure promises against performance - because words matter and fact checking is a crucial function of an independent press. The challenge is how best to maintain a public record of a public figure’s statements, how to efficiently extract meaningful information from large amounts of published data, and how to create a useful interface that allows users to explore the relationship between what a politician says and what happens as a result. The prototype will test different ways of extracting and presenting information and experiment with using the data for new journalism.