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This research examines the evolution of automated fact-checking at Africa Check, a prominent fact-checking organisation based in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal, through the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools into its fact-checking process. The progress focuses on three phases, which include claim detection to identify check-worthy claims, claim matching to retrieve already verified information and robot-checking to validate claims. The methodology used in this study involved analysing the experiences of reporters and editors from Africa Check. In-depth interviews were conducted to reveal the advances in time and effort required to verify information, providing key insights into the relationship between technology and journalism. The findings also shed light on how AI can be used to combat misinformation and promote media literacy in Africa, demonstrating how the adoption of AI has helped Africa Check to expand its reach and increase its impact. As a result, these improvements have profound implications for political accountability, trust in the media, and the fight against misinformation. This research offers valuable contributions to the ongoing debates about the adoption of technology in journalism and the importance of leveraging technology to strengthen the relationship between journalists and their audiences.

Human dignity is a crucial concept in international and domestic human rights law. It is understood to be the foundation of human rights, and while we know what human rights are, the nature, content, and grounds of human dignity remain unclear. The aim of this chapter is to propose scientific grounds for human dignity. In this context, the author will explore contemporary evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, where it is claimed that human nature is constituted by tendencies to cooperate (Tomasello, 2009), or under a different formulation, by narrow altruism and imperfect prudence (Załuski, 2009). Evolutionary psychology holds that we have basic tendencies to cooperate with one another and to behave altruistically in order to achieve a common good. This means that our basic evolutionary default and scientifically proven mode of being are optimistic and can be labelled as morally good. The author argues that this human nature constitutes scientific grounds for human dignity. The author’s argument holds that since human dignity comprises the inherent worth of every human being, this positive moral fact about the scientifically understood human nature is human dignity. The author then present this issue within two broader philosophical frameworks of analytic philosophy – namely, naturalism (especially methodological naturalism) and metaphysical realism. Following this, the author contends that references to natural sciences in debates on the foundations of human dignity and human rights argue against the strongest objection to human rights – the objection of Western ethnocentrism.

This essay summarizes the formation of the concept of “sociality” as it was developed in The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Humanities and Social Sciences. Its thesis is that if the human sciences are to have a representative discipline – in contrast with a field of largely topical studies – that defines human reality in the course of its work, then that discipline must have a concept of its distinctive reality, and the basic fact that the concept describes must be indisputable: that is, it must be irreducible and irrepressible as well as distinctively human. These qualities are satisfied by the formula “each-dependent-on-All,” where each shows itself as “intra-dependence” and, therefore, as “being-in-the-middle” of a “course of activity without immanent beginning and end.” This concept is then applied to theoretical positions presented or hinted at by the other chapters of this volume in order (1) to see how a given theory might differ from what is conventionally taught as sociological theory when the basic fact is systematically taken into account, and (2) to find among the implications of the concept a dialectic of social progress and societal change that is incompatible with received positive ideas of society, e.g., as an entity, system, or totality and compatible with the idea of such an apparent formation as a project in which the manifold (internal) relations of each-dependent-on-All present social progress as the ongoing reality of human reality.

What is the relationship between the descriptive and the normative? The usual answer, in the social sciences, is based on a sharp distinction between facts and values. This chapter reprises and radicalizes long-standing critiques of the fact/value distinction, proposes an alternative theory of ontic webs in its stead, and then uses it to delineate six different forms of public sociology. It argues that facts are value-laden and values fact-laden; that facts and values are entangled in webs of belief and practice; and that attributions of causation and moral responsibility are connected via ontological assumptions. Effective public sociology therefore requires a combination of ontological extension and moral translation.

Recent trends against capital punishment raise the question of whether or when the U.S. is going to abolish the death penalty. One way of investigating this possibility is to study the work of capital prosecutors. In this chapter I analyze California capital prosecutors through a close reading of trial transcripts and interviews. The results show that prosecutor discourses evince a paradox – while instantiating powerful ideological themes that may underlie state killing, prosecutors also assert the primacy of ‘facts’ and ‘law.’ While this tension does not represent a strict measure of capital punishment's lifespan, its presence suggests that these types of tensions are not enough to change the law, thereby hinting that while the death penalty may be weakened in the United States, it is not close to dying.

One crucial but sometimes overlooked fact regarding the difference between observation in the cross-section and observation over time must be stated before proceeding further. Tempting though it is to draw conclusions about the dynamics of a process from cross-sectional observations taken as a snapshot of that process, it is a fallacious practice except under a very precise condition that is highly unlikely to obtain in processes of interest to the social scientist. That condition is known as ergodicity.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

I am the oldest daughter from a family of five girls. I was born in the 1950s and had my first real encounters with feminism as a social movement during the second wave women's liberation movement in the United States in the 1970s. This movement had an important impact on me. Despite the appeal of the women's movement for me, I lived a powerfully gendered life. I had not been allowed to read The Lord of the rings series in school because I was a girl. I detested Barbie dolls and yet was sentenced to hours of play with them if I was to have any social life at all. I had to pretend that I neither liked nor was competent at math and science. My high school boyfriend was paying me a compliment when decades after high school he told me, “At least you never let on that you were smart. I always appreciated that about you.” When I attended the first day of a basic calculus class at a public university in 1981, the professor announced, “No female has ever passed a class with me.” In 1983, I was reprimanded by my elementary school principal for wearing slacks to teach. This was reminiscent of my childhood days when my parents finally, but only, allowed me to wear trousers to school on Fridays. In 1990, my 5-year-old daughter told me, “Well, mom, everyone knows boys are smarter than girls” (of course she has since changed her mind!).