StatCheck: Statistical Claim Checking

StatCheck: Statistical Claim Checking

This project, carried in collaboration with RadioFrance, aims to help journalists with fact-checking tasks. We gathered heterogeneous data from statistic sources of reference,  including INSEE and Eurostat, in which we then search for the statistic facts that can be used to check a specific statistic claim. Our platform also includes methods for: statistic claim extraction, propaganda detection, media monitoring through transcription then AI-powered analysis, and more.

StatCheck has been featured in the French general-audience media, see here or here.

A general-audience presentation of the project jointly with Estelle Cognacq, Deputy Director of France Info (RadioFrance), can be found here.

Architecture

Social media posts acquisition

We regularly acquire the tweets and Facebook posts of public personalities of interest. This list, variable, contains mainly political personalities of the French government.

We provide an interface highligting the posts containing statistical or factual claims, and generate queries to evaluate the claim against our statistic corpus.

Video presentation

  • A video presenting StatCheck is available here.
  • 2024: A video presenting StatCheck updated search system is available here.

Publications

  • Oana Balalau, Simon Ebel, Helena Galhardas, Théo Galizzi, Ioana Manolescu STaR: Space and Time-aware Statistic Query Answering. ACM CIKM 2024, Boise, USA. Also informally shown at BDA 2024, Orléans, France.
  • Oana Balalau, Simon Ebel, Théo Galizzi, Ioana Manolescu, Quentin Massonnat (CEDAR),
    Antoine Deiana, Emilie Gautreau, Antoine Krempf, Thomas Pointillon, Gérald Roux, Joanna Yakin (Radio France) Statistical Claim Checking: StatCheck in Action (demonstration), ACM CIKM 2022, Atlanta, USA. Also informally shown at BDA 2022, Clermont-Ferrand, France.
  • Oana Balalau, Simon Ebel, Théo Galizzi, Ioana Manolescu, Quentin Massonnat (CEDAR),
    Antoine Deiana, Emilie Gautreau, Antoine Krempf, Thomas Pointillon, Gérald Roux, Joanna Yakin (Radio France) Fact-checking Multidimensional Statistic Claims in French. Truth And Trust Online (TTO) Conference, 2022, Boston, USA.