• Priority Area Boosting Fact-checking Activities in Europe
• Funding Round / Action Types 4th Funding Round – Urgent Actions
• Year 2023, 2024
• Country Portugal
• Project Status Ongoing

The Project NATURAL | Fact-Checking Natural Remedies and Herbal Medicine will look to contribute to tackling pressing issues related to disinformation and misinformation, by improving the detection and understanding of misinformation narratives in health- Viral Check is a health fact-checking newspaper. In this regard, NATURAL – whose activities will be an addition to the applicant’s current activities – focuses on fact-checking on natural remedies and herbal medicine, with the goal of making populations more resilient to the corrosive effects of misinformation in these matters, especially in contexts of public health crisis.

The health sector faces an additional challenge concerning misinformation – its complex communication. The average citizen often lacks the capacity to understand the accuracy of a particular piece of information, since reliable information on a given subject is often encoded in inaccessible scientific language, making it easier to rely on second, unverified sources. NATURAL aims to reach out to the entire population through clear language accessible to all, demystifying the most “traditional” and deeply rooted beliefs in different segments of the population. The content will be thought of in an attractive way, considering the most appealing themes for different age groups.

Viral developed its own methodology that covers the selection process (the processes by which the applicant chooses what claims to evaluate); research methods (the basic techniques and types of sources that the applicant most commonly uses when conducting research on claims, as well as the official rules and editorial policies that govern its approaches); claim evaluation (the systems and processes by which the applicant establishes the veracity of a claim). In addition to these criteria, the NATURAL project will have a stricter selection process, as only topics related to natural remedies and herbal medicine and impacting on prominent global health issues will be considered.