Interviews With IFCN-Member Fact-Checkers, 2025

We conduct 18 semi-structured interviews with International Fact-Checking Network member fact-checkers from around the world. Our findings underline the diverse range of epistemic work undertaken by fact-checkers. We argue that this diverse range of work is consistent with three distinct epistemic approaches to fact-checking, which we term the verification model, the argumentative model, and the interpretative model. Our findings suggest that the verification model is a dominant but not universal ideal that is rarely fully or consistently implemented in practice. Our findings also offer insights regarding the appeal of the verification model as well as the reasons why and circumstances in which fact-checkers move beyond it. Our findings contribute towards a fuller, richer understanding and characterisation of the epistemologies of fact-checking; and have significant implications for critiques and defences of the epistemology of fact-checking and concepts and measures proposed in the literature to enhance the epistemic approach of fact-checkers.