Retroactive Gatekeepers: Fact-Checkers, Electoral Disinformation, and Audience Engagement in India

The 2024 Indian General Election was marred by an unprecedented wave of disinformation—deepfakes, doctored visuals, and communal hoaxes—disseminated across multilingual, mobile-first platforms. While fact-checkers have become central to electoral integrity globally, little is known about how they operate in high-risk, linguistically fragmented, and digitally unequal contexts like India. Addressing this gap, this study examines how Indian fact-checkers acted as retroactive gatekeepers during the election, intervening after misinformation had already gone viral. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with fact-checkers from six organizations and ethnographic observation within one fact-checking organization's newsroom, the study explores how sociotechnical conditions—language diversity, infrastructural asymmetries, and platform algorithms—influenced verification routines, editorial decisions, and audience engagement. Fact-checkers prioritized claims based on virality, emotional salience, and harm potential, while navigating political polarization and informal editorial structures. Multilingualism emerged as both a logistical hurdle and a disinformation amplifier, with fact-checkers relying on informal networks to bridge gaps. Audiences were reconceptualized as collaborators, with participatory tip lines and mobile-optimized literacy materials used to build trust and reach. Despite the availability of AI detection tools, practitioners preferred manual verification due to reliability concerns in vernacular settings. The study expands gatekeeping theory by foregrounding the reactive, participatory, and context-specific nature of fact-checking in the Global South. It offers practical insights for building inclusive verification ecosystems by investing in vernacular infrastructure, community partnerships, and preventive media literacy. This research contributes to underexplored areas of election-related disinformation, fact-checking, and gatekeeping in non-Western democracies.