Communicative Resilience in Platformed Fact-Checking: The Instrumental–Relational–Infrastructural Model of Engagement

In the present juncture fact-checking has become a durable yet fragile feature of contemporary journalism, especially in platformed environments where visibility, trust, and sustainability are constantly under pressure. While existing scholarship has often approached engagement as a metric or audience-facing strategy, this paper suggests that such views may underestimate the work engagement actually performs in fact-checking practice. This article covers this gap by examining the way Indian fact-checking organizations conceptualize and apply user engagement strategies as a multi-dimensional practice. We introduce the Instrumental–Relational–Infrastructural (IRI) model of engagement by conducting 24 in-depth interviews with 13 fact-checking units in India's National Capital Region; the discourses from the interviews were also verified with material traces on the respective webpages. A novel concept of “infrastructural engagement” is also put forward, extending Strategic Communication Theory into the material and ethical dimensions of credibility work. Rather than treating engagement as an outcome, the findings suggest it functions as an enabling condition for credibility itself. In this sense, fact-checking authority seems to rest not only on correcting false claims, but on maintaining communicative systems that can endure volatility.