Truth with a Twist: The Rhetoric of Persuasion in Professional vs. Community-Authored Fact-Checks

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Razuvayevskaya, Olesya, Bontcheva, Kalina
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Razuvayevskaya, Olesya
Bontcheva, Kalina
author_facet Razuvayevskaya, Olesya
Bontcheva, Kalina
contents This study presents the first large-scale comparison of persuasion techniques present in crowd- versus professionally-written debunks. Using extensive datasets from Community Notes (CNs), EUvsDisinfo, and the Database of Known Fakes (DBKF), we quantify the prevalence and types of persuasion techniques across these fact-checking ecosystems. Contrary to prior hypothesis that community-produced debunks rely more heavily on subjective or persuasive wording, we find no evidence that CNs contain a higher average number of persuasion techniques than professional fact-checks. We additionally identify systematic rhetorical differences between CNs and professional debunking efforts, reflecting differences in institutional norms and topical coverage. Finally, we examine how the crowd evaluates persuasive language in CNs and show that, although notes with more persuasive elements receive slightly higher overall helpfulness ratings, crowd raters are effective at penalising the use of particular problematic rhetorical means
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_14105
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Truth with a Twist: The Rhetoric of Persuasion in Professional vs. Community-Authored Fact-Checks
Razuvayevskaya, Olesya
Bontcheva, Kalina
Computation and Language
This study presents the first large-scale comparison of persuasion techniques present in crowd- versus professionally-written debunks. Using extensive datasets from Community Notes (CNs), EUvsDisinfo, and the Database of Known Fakes (DBKF), we quantify the prevalence and types of persuasion techniques across these fact-checking ecosystems. Contrary to prior hypothesis that community-produced debunks rely more heavily on subjective or persuasive wording, we find no evidence that CNs contain a higher average number of persuasion techniques than professional fact-checks. We additionally identify systematic rhetorical differences between CNs and professional debunking efforts, reflecting differences in institutional norms and topical coverage. Finally, we examine how the crowd evaluates persuasive language in CNs and show that, although notes with more persuasive elements receive slightly higher overall helpfulness ratings, crowd raters are effective at penalising the use of particular problematic rhetorical means
title Truth with a Twist: The Rhetoric of Persuasion in Professional vs. Community-Authored Fact-Checks
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14105