Fact-Checkers as a Professional Community of Experts. The Research Project – From Idea to Implementation

The following article presents an elaborate methodological concept that, in perspective, can serve as a model for analyzing professional communities (such as journalists) understood primarily as symbolic and discursive communities. This concept was partially tested by the author during her research on the community of fact-checkers (FC) in Poland. This study used in-depth interviews. The article presents the research design and its implementation, as well as the preliminary generalized results of the study. Special attention is paid to the usefulness of the IDI method in the context of professional community research, and to the difficulties that may be associated with the use of this method.