DPG

APIs

What are APIs

An Application Programming Interface (API) is software that allows access to databases in a consistent way so that a computer can query the data. The standards in APIs means information retrieval can be automated, and not always needing a human to download data from a website.

It is the technique that likely powers the train ticket booking website you use, provides the data to a live government dashboard or allows people to build a third-party client that lets you aggregate all your social media into one place.

APIs can save fact checkers time

Fact checking works in lots of different ways. Sometimes fact checks will take hours or days to write and require in-depth research. Other times, immediacy is important.

This is especially true for ‘live fact checking’, the process of covering a TV debate or speech and being able to quickly identify repeats of things that have been previously checked and rapidly verifying new facts and figures that are quoted. In this instance, being able to quickly stop potential spreading of misinformation at source means even fairly small time savings in a process become vital and allow checks and social media commentary to be published faster.

Where good technology and good data both exist, an opportunity to make a dramatic difference exists here. This is especially true where APIs are made available for fact checkers to use.

Making quality APIs

Good quality APIs are a helpful part of any automation of a fact checking process. They allow for the easy retrieval of information in real time and for fact checking tools to be built to access data directly (rather than by using files like PDFs or Excel spreadsheets). This means high quality information can be shown to fact checkers as quickly as possible, rather than having to search for and download files. Put simply, this reduces the time it takes to undertake a fact check.

Information via an API can also often be scoped to get just the most useful information, so allowing quick access to trends (e.g. GDP is rising) and singular figures (e.g. unemployment in the month of March).

With the development of more and more sophisticated fact checking tools, access to openly published, openly licenced machine readable data is one of the most powerful ways that our work can be dramatically improved.

Guides for making APIs

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