About HKBU Fact Check

HKBU Fact Check

HKBU Fact Check is the fact-checking service of the School of Communication at Hong Kong Baptist University in Hong Kong. It was publicly launched on 29 December 2020, following a manual pilot run in September 2020, and was described by the university as the first research-based, systematic fact-checking service launched and operated by an independent academic institution in Hong Kong. The service checks suspicious content circulating on news websites, social media and other online platforms in Hong Kong, publishing its findings on its own website and on social media, and combines public fact-checking with academic research and media literacy education.

Launch and first steps

The service began with a pilot run in September 2020 in which fact-checking was carried out manually. Selected suspicious content appearing on popular online and social media platforms in Hong Kong was identified for investigation by the project team, covering politics, business, health, science and other social issues, and the results were shared on the service's website and on platforms including Facebook and Instagram. The public launch followed on 29 December 2020. From the outset the university presented the service as a "research-public service" product, characterised by a high level of transparency and integration with academic research in journalism and communication studies, and as a step towards a human-machine hybrid intelligence system — an innovative concept of artificial intelligence-supported fact-checking. At launch it was operated jointly by the school's AI and Media Research Lab and its Institute for Journalism and Society, under the university's System Health Lab.

Leadership and independence

At launch the service was co-directed by Celine Song, an associate professor at the School of Communication, and Raymond Li, an associate professor of practice, and managed by Stephanie Tsang, then an assistant professor, with support from Nick Zhang. Tsang, now a professor in the Department of Communication Studies, is the service's director. HKBU Fact Check states that it is established by the School of Communication but operates editorially and operationally independently of Hong Kong Baptist University: the school allocates resources and appoints the personnel needed to run the centre, but does not participate in editorial decisions, and the university has no role in its operations or editorial processes. It describes itself as a nonpartisan, independent, self-funded organisation that accepts no external sponsorships, in order to keep its fact-checking free of prejudice, bias and external influence.

Vision and mission

The service works under the School of Communication's motto, "Truth is virtue". Its stated aims are to reduce the level of misinformation and disinformation in mass media, to increase the public's media literacy, to facilitate academic research, and to promote communication between professionals and practitioners. It commits to providing fact-checking independently, precisely and transparently, and to upholding journalistic professionalism. Alongside its published verdicts, it organises workshops and publishes academic research intended to provide insights into tackling the problem of fake news in Hong Kong. HKBU describes it as one of the three fact-checking bodies focused on Chinese-language content in Hong Kong, a position that shapes its workload: much of the misleading material circulating in the city is in Chinese, and the service's checks address that material directly.

How a check is done

HKBU Fact Check publishes a detailed account of its process and criteria. Claims are selected in three ways: filtering of information on news websites, social media and online databases through manual selection and computer-assisted selection; submissions of suspicious claims by the public; and selection according to a claim's prominence in Hong Kong, judged by likes, comments and shares, and by whether the content is checkable. The service states that it does not fact-check opinions. Investigators then trace the source of a claim, capturing screenshots and recording the URL of the material in text, image, audio or short video form. The check itself applies the five Ws and an H — when, where, who, what, why and how — and seeks evidence from official press releases, authoritative media reports and research reports. Where necessary, the team contacts the person or organisation making the claim, and engages experts in the relevant field, by email or telephone. Contextual information is retrieved, and the team asks whether any content has been intentionally eliminated in a way that distorts meaning.

People, training and review

The service's safeguards are procedural as well as editorial. All fact-checkers sign a Declaration of Interest Form before joining the team, and fact-checkers can join only after passing three rounds of fact-checking tests and signing that declaration. Before publication, a draft report goes through editing and review by professional editors and consultants, and the final report is published only with the approval of supervisors. If mistakes or defects are found in a published report, the project team reviews and investigates it again; once an error is confirmed, the report is updated and the reasons for the correction and its date are clarified. This published corrections practice, together with the declaration-of-interest requirement, is part of how the service presents its transparency to readers.

Networks and funding

HKBU Fact Check is a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network and a member of the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Alliance. Its listed sources of funds include an International Fact-Checking Network ENGAGE 2023 grant award of US$100,000, recorded for 2024, and support from the Centre for Holistic Teaching and Learning at Hong Kong Baptist University. The grant sits alongside the service's stated position that it is self-funded and accepts no external sponsorship: the distinction it draws is between institutional and grant support of the kind recorded on its own site and commercial sponsorship that might influence verdicts. Membership of the UNESCO alliance connects the service's media literacy work — the workshops, exhibitions and community programmes — to a global network of organisations working on information literacy.

Technology and research ambitions

Technology was part of the plan from the first announcement. At launch the university said the service would be enhanced with a BU FactCheck app, then in soft launch, applying a crowd-sourced fact-checking strategy to aggregate ratings, comments and suspicious content from experts, on a platform where the project team worked alongside veteran media practitioners. The team also planned an annual index of news credibility on selected topics and platforms, and was developing what it described as Hong Kong's first Cantonese-language, AI-supported Misinformation Research Database, adopting a computational approach to fact-checking. The technological strand has continued: researchers associated with the university have demonstrated an AI-powered "Fact-Checking as a Service" platform in which multiple AI agents collaboratively analyse and challenge information, mirroring the reasoning of human fact-checkers, with the aim of making truth verification scalable. Director Stephanie Tsang has described using artificial intelligence in her own fact-checking work to flag suspicious content, streamlining the detection process.

Climate misinformation and public education

In 2025 the service published survey research on climate misinformation in Hong Kong and built a public exhibition around it. An online survey of 1,600 local residents, conducted at the end of 2024, found that over three-quarters of respondents considered climate change misinformation a "very serious" to "extremely serious" challenge, while nearly a quarter held misconceptions — for example that cold waves disprove climate change, that climate change is purely a natural process unrelated to human activity, or a sense of fatalism that humanity has already missed the chance to address climate disasters. The exhibition, titled "Is Climate Change a Genuine Phenomenon?", ran from 9 to 22 May 2025 at the Koo Ming Kown Exhibition Gallery in the university's Communication and Visual Arts Building, addressing public misconceptions and the typical narrative traps of climate misinformation, and sharing tips for validating facts with a fact-checking mindset. Dean of the School of Communication Zhong Bu said at the time that HKBU Fact Check had spent five years at the forefront of the battle against misinformation, providing free fact-checking services enhanced by artificial intelligence.

Community partnerships

The service's reach beyond the university runs through partnerships. Through partnerships with organisations such as The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups and the Hong Kong Press Council, and collaborations with the HKBU Library, Tsang has extended the reach of HKBU Fact Check into diverse communities, with the stated aim of ensuring that everyone has the tools and expertise to combat misinformation. This community dimension distinguishes an academic fact-checking service from a purely publishing one: its outputs include workshops and exhibitions as well as verdicts, and its audience includes schools, youth organisations and the wider public as well as readers of individual fact-checks.

HKBU Fact Check today

More than five years after its launch, HKBU Fact Check remains the fact-checking service of Hong Kong Baptist University's School of Communication, operating independently of the university in editorial terms, directed by Stephanie Tsang, and counted among Hong Kong's three fact-checking bodies focused on Chinese-language content. Its identity combines four elements documented across its own published materials: a defined, public verification process with trained and tested fact-checkers; membership of the International Fact-Checking Network and the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Alliance; a research programme that has produced work such as the 1,600-resident climate misinformation survey; and an education mission carried into the community through partnerships and exhibitions. In a city where fact-checking emerged under pressure from 2019 onwards, it represents the academic, institution-based model of the practice.