{"id":1704,"date":"2026-07-31T10:50:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T10:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/?p=1704"},"modified":"2026-07-31T10:50:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T10:50:43","slug":"weekly-fact-checking-round-up-twisted-statistics-and-ai-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/weekly-fact-checking-round-up-twisted-statistics-and-ai-misinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly fact-checking round-up: Twisted statistics and AI misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Through the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), the EU supports a European network of fact-checkers, including TheJournal in Ireland. For a monthly roundup of European fact-checks, visit the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/edmo.eu\/\">main EDMO website<\/a>. Here, we highlight recent fact-checks by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thejournal.ie\/factcheck\/news\/\">TheJournal FactCheck<\/a>&nbsp;team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thejournal.ie\/great-replacement-theory-ireland-factcheck-maps-ethnic-irish-plantation-7108860-Jul2026\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.thejournal.ie\/great-replacement-theory-ireland-factcheck-maps-ethnic-irish-plantation-7108860-Jul2026\/\">How statistics can be twisted to push the Great Replacement conspiracy theory<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Published: 25 July \u2013 by Shane Raymond<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A map shared on social media used real data from the 2022 census to support the white supremacist conspiracy theory that &#8220;Irish people are being replaced&#8221;. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thejournal.ie\/ryanair-window-incident-liverpoool-dublin-debunked-7116350-Jul2026\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.thejournal.ie\/ryanair-window-incident-liverpoool-dublin-debunked-7116350-Jul2026\/\">Debunked: AI pic used to mis-tell story of a man almost sucked out a Ryanair plane window<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Published: 29 July \u2013 by Shane Raymond<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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\u2014almost like a game of telephone. OpenAI&#8217;s SynthID tool helped identify a digital watermark in the shared image.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Through the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), the EU supports a European network of fact-checkers, including TheJournal in Ireland. For a monthly roundup of European fact-checks, visit the&nbsp;main EDMO website. Here, we highlight recent fact-checks by&nbsp;TheJournal FactCheck&nbsp;team. How statistics can be twisted to push the Great Replacement conspiracy theory Published: 25 July \u2013 by Shane &#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/weekly-fact-checking-round-up-twisted-statistics-and-ai-misinformation\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Weekly fact-checking round-up: Twisted statistics and AI misinformation&#8221;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":1502,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,11],"tags":[65,27,28,44,54],"class_list":["post-1704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-factchecks","category-news","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-disinformation","tag-fact-checking","tag-misinformation","tag-thejournal"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/pexels-hartonocreativestudio-20457108-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1705,"href":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704\/revisions\/1705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmohub.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}