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Professional Certificate · Master's level · CPP-05
Verifying Facts and Statements
For: Journalists, community radio presenters, communication and monitoring officers, content moderators.
Learning outcomes
- Verify a statement, a figure or a piece of information by tracing it back to the primary source.
- Distinguish disinformation, misinformation and malinformation, and analyse how they circulate.
- Apply the ethical rules of verification, including non-amplification.
Programme over 4 weeks
| Week | Content |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Disinformation, misinformation, malinformation: definitions, actors, mechanisms of circulation on social networks and messaging apps. |
| Week 2 | Verifying a statement: primary source, figures, context, contacting the person concerned, scale of verdicts. |
| Week 3 | Ethics of verification: choice of topics, non-amplification, public correction of errors; election periods and health crises. |
| Week 4 | Professional simulation: time-limited verifications of content provided by the teacher. |
Assessment
Marked professional simulation, assessed against a rubric (70%): time-limited verifications; online knowledge-check quiz (30%). The content verified is provided by the teacher: no private individual is implicated.
The certificate is awarded with a mark of at least 10 out of 20.
Optional: Fact-Check Article
An additional 1-credit module over 2 weeks (CPP-05C), awarded as a separate certificate; together with this certificate, it makes up the full course component of the original programme.
- Writing a fact-check article that is transparent about its method, without amplifying the false information.
- Documenting the process and publishing on the programme's platform.
At your own pace: the self-paced pathway
In a class, this certificate takes 4 weeks, on the cohort's dates. On the self-paced pathway, you start whenever you like, online, and progress at your own pace. The price is the same.
Estimate how long my pathway will take
- Duration
- about 4 weeks
- Estimated end
- 4 weeks after you start
- Examination
- Online, subject to available slots, no earlier than 4 weeks after you start
- Payment
- In a single payment
An indicative estimate, for a start today and 40 hours of work. You can change your pace along the way; the pathway must be completed within 12 weeks (about 3 months) of your start. Your e-Campus access opens with your first payment.
Admission
Professional practice in information or communication assessed on application. Admission based on application; detailed requirements set by the school.
The credits you earn are recognised without further assessment if you later join the programme they come from, Professional Master's degree in Journalism, within a period set by the certificate regulations.