Selective fact-checking within a confrontational frame: a critical discourse analysis of the coverage of China–Russia relations in Western fact-checking organizations

Abstract

The article analyzes the transformation of Western fact-checking from an instrument for verifying statements into a sociotechnical mechanism for producing normative “truth” under conditions of digital mediatization and geopolitical confrontation, using the coverage of China–Russia relations as a case study. It examines how fact-checking functions as a form of metajournalism claiming epistemic authority while simultaneously reproducing power asymmetries and entrenching a confrontational interpretive frame in which Sino-Russian interaction is systematically read through models of “authoritarian collusion,” hierarchical dependence, or a situational “marriage of convenience.” Based on publications by a number of Western fact-checking organizations from 2020–2023, and employing critical discourse analysis in combination with content and comparative analysis, the study identifies persistent strategies of contextual exclusion, semantic shift, and moralizing re-evaluation of political science concepts, leading to the substitution of verification of empirically observable claims with verification of narratives for conformity to a dominant ideological canon. It is shown that identical international practices are described through a “double vocabulary”: the actions of Western actors are labeled as legitimate forms of diplomacy and communication, whereas analogous actions by Russia and China are designated as propaganda, cognitive operations, and a threat to order. Particular attention is paid to epistemological inequality among sources: the status of a “fact” is correlated not with verifiability but with the status of the speaker, as a result of which closed communications from Western institutions receive a presumption of truth, while the official positions of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China receive a presumption of falsity. Rhetorical techniques for producing an effect of objectivity (interrogative framing, delegitimation through quotation marks, verdicts such as “lacks context”) are described in detail, enabling the neutralization of “inconvenient” true information without direct falsification. As a result, fact-checking appears as an instrument of symbolic violence and “soft power” that not so much reduces uncertainty as intensifies distrust, reduces the complexity of international relations, and contributes to the escalation of a conflict-oriented worldview.