From Crisis to Credibility: Institutional Isomorphism and the Evolution of Indian Fact-Checking Organizations

Abstract

In the Global South, particularly in populous democracies like India, misinformation and disinformation have become persistent features of public discourse. False narratives in this country don’t just appear during moments of political tension, they’re often deployed strategically to tap into identity-based divisions and sway public sentiment. Understanding how institutions respond to these dynamics, this study investigates the organizational trajectories of fact-checking entities operating in India’s National Capital Region (NCR) using the lens of Institutional Isomorphism. The study examines how external pressures and normative influences have shaped their institutional behaviour. The three dimensions of the theory —coercive, mimetic, and normative, were employed to understand the forces guiding their evolution. Coercive pressures from elections, communal unrest, and the COVID-19 pandemic pushed many into reactive, short-term responses, and over time, with international standards and lessons borrowed from global peers, these organisations were encouraged towards more stable institutional practices like multilingual outreach, broader thematic coverage, and new verification tools based on platform-integration and Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. Drawing on 24 interviews across 13 NCR-based organizations, the findings suggest a discernible shift from reactive crisis response to strategic institutionalization, positioning fact-checkers as emerging pillars within India’s media accountability ecosystem.