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#InActualFact

Social Media Campaign, 2013-15
Produced by Liz Crow in association with CoQuo PR

A screenshot of the In Actual Fact site shows a white card on a light grey background. Text reads: 'Public believe benefit fraud at least 27%. DWP's own statistics say 0.7%. #InActualFace' and has links to the information source. The card has links for posting to twitter and facebook and for copying the card's URL. At either side of the card are arrows which, on the site, scroll the reader to the next card.

About

 

As Government and press propaganda about the cuts and benefit claimants skews public opinion towards division and hatred, we urgently need to answer back with the actual facts – shaping public opinion until governments and would-be-governments have no choice but to address the damage they are doing.

In Actual Fact is a web-based practical resource of actual facts that combat the austerity rhetoric of governments and  press. Each fact is short, memorable and instantly tweetable, providing carefully sourced, bite-sized information to call on when answering back.

So far we’ve organised mass tweets to counter programmes such as C4’s Benefits Britain 1949, BBC 1’s Britain on the Fiddle, C4’s Benefits Street and C5’s The Big Benefits Row, during the Tory party conference and against IDS’s welfare speech at the ‘Centre for Social Justice’ think tank, as well as in support of the People’s Assembly national Bonfire of Austerity and campaigns such as WOW Petition.

In Actual Fact emerged from our Bedding Out project which demonstrated a clear need for a practical resource that would provide a convincing counter to propaganda. In Actual Fact is intuitive one-click activism that is engaging, widely accessible and with the potential for impact.

You can tweet occasionally, daily or  multiple times each day, making In Actual Fact your browser’s home page as a reminder to keep answering back. You can tweet in direct response to press and television coverage or government statements and join us in a mass tweet (or organise one yourself). You can also submit your own austerity actual facts via the site.

Join us to expose the cost of austerity through actual facts.

In Actual Fact operated for two years from http://inactualfact.org.uk/ and @inactualfact101.

Credits

  • #InActualFact

    Concept & direction by
    Liz Crow

    Website
    CoQuo PR

    Interns
    Liam Fouts
    Savannah Simons
    Jessica Thomas

    Mass tweets
    Lyn Bruce @ladylyn54
    (But feel free to use the site to organise your own mass tweets too!)

    Production
    Roaring Girl Productions in association with CoQuo PR

Press

  • "For data you can trust"

    ‪@singbeforeidie
  • "You were on fire yesterday with your stats!"

    @memtitued
  • "Getting an education reading #InActualFact hashtags"

    @hackista‬
  • "This website will make you sad and angry in equal measure. Assuming that you have at least half a soul."

    @probablypenman‬
  • “Brilliantly concise and irrefutably truthful tweets”

    @robbo555
  • The truth will out >>> inactualfact.org.uk

    @TenPercent

To cite this page: Crow, Liz (2013) In Actual Fact, Roaring Girl Productions [online] [Available at: http://www.roaring-girl.com/work/inactualfact/] [Accessed 19/03/2024]