When Misinformation Speaks and Converses: Rethinking Fact-Checking in Audio Platforms

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the need to redesign fact-checking methods for audio platforms, considering their spoken and conversational nature, which differs from written content and poses unique verification challenges.

Contribution

It highlights the limitations of existing fact-checking pipelines for audio and advocates for new approaches tailored to spoken and conversational media.

Findings

Existing pipelines are ineffective for audio misinformation.

Audio misinformation involves prosody, pacing, and emotion, not just transcripts.

Rethinking verification pipelines is necessary for effective audio fact-checking.

Abstract

Audio platforms have evolved beyond entertainment. They have become central to public discourse, from podcasts and radio to WhatsApp voice notes and live streams. With millions of shows and hundreds of millions of listeners, audio platforms are now a major channel for misinformation. Yet existing fact-checking pipelines are mostly designed for written claims, overlooking the unique properties of spoken media. We argue that audio misinformation is not merely textual content with transcripts: it is structurally different because it is both spoken - carrying persuasive force through prosody, pacing, and emotion - and conversational - unfolding across turns, speakers, and episodes. These dual properties introduce verification difficulties that traditional methods rarely face. This position paper synthesizes evidence across modalities and platforms, examines datasets and methods, and highlights why existing pipelines fail on audio. We argue that advancing fact-checking requires rethinking verification pipelines around the spoken and conversational realities of audio.