Through the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), the EU supports a European network of factcheckers, including TheJournal in Ireland. For a monthly roundup of European factchecks, visit the main EDMO website. Here, we highlight recent pieces by TheJournal FactCheck team.
How statistics can be twisted to push the Great Replacement conspiracy theory
Published: 25 July – by Shane Raymond
A map shared on social media used real data from the 2022 census to support the white supremacist conspiracy theory that “Irish people are being replaced”. But this interpretation is completely mistaken, as it miscalculates the data by treating people who did not state their ethnicity as if they were not ethnically Irish.
Debunked: AI pic used to mis-tell story of a man almost sucked out a Ryanair plane window
Published: 29 July – by Shane Raymond
Although it resembled real images from the Ryanair flight where the incident occurred, an AI-generated photo was used to tell a slightly different story—almost like a game of telephone. OpenAI’s SynthID tool helped identify a digital watermark in the shared image.