In an era when disinformation and misinformation run rampant, fact-checking has emerged as a critical tool for ensuring the credibility and integrity of information and for holding public figures accountable for their statements. However, there is a growing tendency among authoritarian governments to co-opt the vocabulary of fact-checking to advance their preferred narratives. This has created opportunities for abuse, as partisan actors co-opt the discourse and performance of fact-checking to serve their political agendas. 

The Ethiopian government’s practice of fact-checking is one such example. During Ethiopia’s devastating Tigray war (2020–2022), the government-run Twitter/X account Ethiopia Current Issues Fact Check @ETFactCheck tried to position itself as an impartial arbiter of facts in an effort to promote its own war narratives, discredit international news media, obscure news about atrocities, and silence criticism of its conduct during the war. 

@ETFactCheck appeared on Twitter in early November 2020, posting for the first time on November 11, a week after war erupted in Tigray. The account quickly amassed over 100,000 followers. Amid a pervasive propaganda war, accompanied by coordinated social media campaigns, the account became one of the tools utilized by the government to push its preferred narratives and discredit critics. By labeling it as a fact-checking account, the government attempted to co-opt the authority, credibility, and independence associated with fact-checking as an institution. 

Tactics

The account employed a familiar set of tactics. One important tactic was distorting the framing and the narrative around the war by claiming that the conflict does not constitute a civil war but a law enforcement operation. In one of its very first posts, @ETFactCheck invited readers to “get the latest and fact-based information on the State of Emergency and Rule of Law Operations being undertaken in Tigray Region by the FDRE Federal Government”, framing the conflict as a law enforcement operation. It kept insisting that this is not a civil war, for instance, tweeting a fact sheet claiming that “Ethiopia is not embroiled in a brutal civil war; it is undertaking a law enforcement operation that will salvage the nation from descending into a civil war.” The government continued to insist the conflict was a limited law enforcement operation despite mobilizing the entirety of the country’s armed forces, and an estimated six hundred thousand fatalities during the two-year period.

An overview of Twitter conversations during the Tigray War also illustrates how the Ethiopian government’s fact-checking  account became embroiled in promoting pro-government narratives. 

Dismissing was another key tactic. The government engaged in dismissing evidence of human rights abuses, atrocities, and evidence of starvation, while ignoring widely corroborated and reported state-linked abuses. For instance, when evidence started to accumulate that Eritrean troops are in Tigray and fighting on the side of the Ethiopian military, @ETFactCheck claimed that “TPLF junta attempted to mislead the public by claiming that Eritrea had invaded by dressing its own militants in Eritrean military uniforms”.

In another instance, the government dismissed a highly circulated story of captured Ethiopian soldiers, claiming that it is a doctored video rather than a real one. @ETFactCheck claimed “the terrorist group TPLF has been dressing its own special forces and militia in national uniforms to play captor” and alleged that “videos have then been sent to Int’l media after editing to make it look like multitudes are captured”. 

In addition to distorted framing and dismissing, the account also co-opted the language of legitimacy familiar within fact-checking circles. As such terms like ‘debunking’, ‘evidence’, and ‘expert analysis’, were employed to accompany state narratives. Expertise, however, was almost always sought from government and military officials themselves. Thus, government spokespersons and military leaders were repeatedly quoted as sources of trustworthy information. For instance, against numerous reports of civilian casualties, the account quotes a general of the ENDF to claim that “the ENDF are carrying out precision target attacks on TPLF military armaments with no targeting of civilian population and locations.” The military’s discipline, precision, and accuracy were frequently invoked as evidence that it is only targeting enemy combatants, despite overwhelming civilian casualties during the war.

Amplifying state media and government sources was another approach, citing pro-government outlets as credible sources while criticizing international media and experts as ‘biased’. Thus, state media was constantly amplified on the account. Additionally, active government Twitter accounts, including the PM Office (@PMEthiopia), Government Communications Service (@FRDEService), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (@mfaethiopia), Ethiopian Media Authority (@EthMediaAuth), and the Prime Minister (@AbiyAhmedAli) were constantly amplified by the Ethiopia Fact Check Account, while international reporting was dismissed as untrustworthy.   

The international media was a primary target of @ETFactCheck. On at least four occasions, the account posted open letters to internationally reputable media, criticizing them for misrepresenting or distorting the reality of the Ethiopian conflict. At other instances, it claimed that the international media is conducting“unfair and orchestrated international media attacks on Ethiopia”. In another instance, it accused the ‘global media’ of “being used to continuously peddle exaggerated and uncorroborated allegations on Ethiopia”. The @NYTimes was a particular target, accused by the account of peddling lies ‘in its overt twisting of facts to fulfill an agenda aimed at tarnishing Ethiopia”. Constantly blaming the international media distracted from the sheer violence of the conflict on the ground, as the harsh realities of war took secondary place to the accusations and counteraccusations of disinformation.

The @ETFactCheck fact-checking account was also used in an effort to point the attention of foreign officials to the Ethiopian government narratives about the war. These officials were primarilyUS officials (@secblinken, @potus, @powerusaid) and other important global actors (@antonioguterres, for instance). This kind of mass mentioning of the Twitter accounts of Western officials was a common tactic used during the Tigray war to amplify specific narratives and discredit alternatives.

Global parallels

This kind of weaponization of fact checking is not unique to Ethiopia. It parallels global authoritarian practice of co-opting fact-checking processes. Russia has increasingly co-opted fact checking to debunk and dismiss unfavorable reporting on Ukraine. This involves an overlapping web of fake fact-checking outlets including Telegram channels, websites, Vkontakte (VK) accounts, and Russian government social media accounts. In China, meanwhile, ‘rumor refutation’, a practice aimed at stamping-out online rumors, have been used to silence criticism of the state, including regarding COVID and human rights abuses of the Uyghur community. In India, PIB Fact Check has been accused of targeting critics of Modi’s policies. From Donald Trump to Bolsenaro, populists and authoritarian rulers have used the language of ‘fake news’ to discredit criticism and scrutiny of their policies and actions. These regimes exploit fact-checking’s credibility to legitimize propaganda, creating doubt where all information becomes suspect and difficult to verify.

This development is especially concerning because the practice of co-opting and abusing the language of fact-checking is rapidly being normalised even in so-called liberal democracies.  In an era where the likes of Elon Musk increasingly use Twitter/X as a political platform for the pro-Trump right-wing agenda, and where social media giants like Meta are abandoning fact-checking as a practice altogether, maintaining some kind of normative standards for democratic deliberation is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible. As our preliminary analysis of fact-checking in Ethiopia shows, however, the alternative to debates grounded on facts is a system where the very notion of what is true is eroded, and where fact-checking becomes just another means to promote political agendas rather than a mechanism designed to reach agreement on what shared facts are.