If more tools and techniques were accessible to fact checkers in the region they would be able to manage their scarce human resources more efficiently. Qadaruddin Shishir, discussing Bangladesh, had the following comments on the issue: “Any kind of tool that helps to verify any claim or at least [make] manual work [easier would be] appreciated, as fact checking is a very timeconsuming process” (interview, 2021). Yudhanjaya Wijerathne pointed out the technical limitations of the tools currently available. The lack of userfriendliness of common tools used in fact checking can limit how much they are being utilized, as most fact checkers come from a journalistic background and only have limited technical knowledge: “A lot of the software that we use in day-to-day life [is] not necessarily cutting-edge. The cutting edge exists, but it takes years and years for people to slap nice interfaces on them, to make them user-friendly” (interview, 2021). Fact checkers and journalists face a conundrum when it comes to certain types of information, which are almost impossible to verify (Yatid 2019). These mostly come in the form of long and complex narratives that use multiple techniques to spread false information (Al-Zaman 2021c). According to Cheryll Ruth Soriano, “there are narratives or stories of falsehoods that are longwinded. Sometimes they flow from one video to another. If you see them as a whole, you [understand] what they’re trying to do to create the particular falsehood. But it’s very hard to flag it as false” (interview, 2021). In such situations, where a straightforward fact check is not feasible, fact checkers give “explainers.” According to a fact checker from an agency in Sri Lanka, who requested to remain anonymous, “explainers are when you can’t directly debunk a story, when you can’t take a straightforward approach. Most of the time, these are misleading narratives. You try to explain what has actually happened, or the true picture of the stories, and how the narrative has been slightly twisted” (interview, 2021). Ayesha Binte Towhid added the following regarding the situation in Bangladesh: “A lot [of what] we see in Bangladesh is image-based misinformation, so it becomes really difficult to debunk. At times, the images are so carefully manipulated that at first glance you wouldn’t be able to debunk it” (interview, 2021). I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH EMOTIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS FACED BY FACT CHECKERS Dilrukshi Handunnetti, from the Center for Investigative Reporting in Sri Lanka, spoke about the additional pressures created by the Covid-19 pandemic. She noted that journalists and fact checkers are under severe pressure and stress due to constantly having to deal with negative information associated with Covid-19. The stress of maintaining their own health and safety while performing their work is a new type of stress that journalists and fact checkers are facing due to the pandemic: A lot of journalists do reach out and say I just can’t take it anymore. I’ve never seen this kind of emotional impact, not even during the years of war. We are always worried about a colleague testing positive and the entire newsroom [being] disrupted or being exposed to the virus, or indirectly exposing your family to the virus because you went on assignment. (interview, 2021) 4.5 PLATFORM-SPECIFIC CHALLENGES IN FACT CHECKING In some cases, the structure of a platform itself is not conducive to fact checking. For example, direct messaging platforms such as WhatsApp use end-to-end encryption, and therefore cannot be searched the way more public platforms can be. During the interviews we conducted, many fact checkers noted that checking mis- or disinformation that spreads via direct messaging apps is difficult. Elin Yunita Kristanti described the method used by Liputan6 to fact check on WhatsApp: Our strategy is to create WhatsApp groups. We have fifteen WhatsApp group in ten regions in Indonesia, with 2,000-plus members. On a daily basis [they] inform us of suspicious information that [is] circulated in their private WhatsApp groups. After the verification has been done, we publish the article on our portal. We also distribute the article to our members and the members will spread the [corrected] articles on the WhatsApp groups. And we also have the WhatsApp chat bot. (interview, 2021) Kristanti observed that sometimes spreaders of false information jump to direct messaging apps to evade fact checkers: They have so many accounts, Facebook groups, and [they] even use several websites to spread Asia – 2 2 9