Verifying Social Media Content

Speed + Unverified Sources = Embarrassing Mistakes

Paul Bradshaw

1) How long has the account existed? If it’s only existed since a relevant story broke (e.g. Jan Moir’s column; an earthquake where someone claims to be a witness) then it’s likely to be opportunistic.

2) Who did the person first ‘follow’ or ‘friend’? These should be personal contacts, or fit the type of person you’re dealing with.

3) Who first followed them? Likewise, it should be their friends and colleagues.

4) Who has spoken to them online? Ditto.

5) Who has spoken about them? Here you may find friends and colleagues, but also people who have rumbled them. But don’t take anyone else’s word for their existence unless you can verify them too.

6) Can you correlate this account with others? The Firefox extension Identify is a useful tool here: it suggests related social network accounts which you can then try to cross-reference. For companies the Chrome extension Polaris Insights does something similar for companies.

7) For Twitter you might also try other tools including PeerIndex and Klout, both of which use algorithms to give extra information on the ‘human-ness’ and content of particular accounts. On Facebook there is the social commenting plugin which attempts to give a credibility score to commenters.

8) Finally, of course, you should try to speak to the person. Phone their office or their employer and confirm whether they do indeed have the account in question.

Mark Little, Storyful

On video verification:

1) Review of the uploader’s history and location to see whether he/she has shared useful and credible content in the past, or if he/she is a “scraper”, passing other people’s content off a their own (location is a big clue: don’t trust uploaders in Japan to post video from Syria).

2) Use of Google street view/maps/satellite imagery to help verify the locations in a video.

3) Consultation of other news sources or validated user content to conﬁrm events in a video happened as they were described.

4) Examination of key features in a video such as weather and background landscape to see if they match known facts on the ground.

5) Translation of every word that comes with a video for additional context.

6) Monitoring social media traffic to see who is sharing the content and what questions are being asked about it.

7) Develop and maintain relationships with people within the community around the story.

BBC College:

1) Referencing locations against maps and existing images from, in particular, geo-located ones.

2) Working with our colleagues in BBC Arabic and BBC Monitoring to ascertain that accents and language are correct for the location.

3) Searching for the original source of the upload/sequences as an indicator of date.

4) Examining weather reports and shadows to confirm that the conditions shown fit with the claimed date and time.

5) Maintaining lists of previously verified material to act as reference for colleagues covering the stories.

6) Checking weaponry, vehicles and license plates against those known for the given country.

Craig Kanalley

1. Timestamp: Anytime something breaks with hundreds of tweets in minutes, like a natural disaster, it’s good to type various keywords and keep paging back until you find the first few tweets about the news. Unless these Tweeters are psychic, they’re probably among the first to have knowledge something’s up and they may have additional context depending on the story.

2. Contextual tweets: Immediately check the Twitter user’s page for related tweets around the tweet you found. You’d be surprised how often someone posts a follow-up tweet later or precedes the ‘breaking tweet’ with other pertinent info. This could provide additional context for the story, but it can also help verify a person, especially if they’re posting pictures or other content from the scene.

4. How many past tweets: Be leery of new Twitter users. If it’s one of their first tweets, it could be anybody starting an account and claiming to have info on a breaking story. The newer the account is, the more skeptical you have to be.

5. What are the past tweets: Check for context by examining the person’s Twitter stream. Go back several pages and see what they normally tweet about. Do they interact with people? Check the accounts they interact with for additional background on piecing together who this person might be. If they say they’re in Paris, are they talking about Paris a month ago? Are they tweeting in French? If not, why not? Evaluate the person and get a feel from them as best you can based on past tweets.

Dan Nainan, The Media’s Favorite ‘Millennial,’ Is 55 Years Old

Andrew Carvin, NPR, Case studies

Gay Girl in Damascus’ actually ‘Fat American in Edinburgh’

Israeli weapons In Libya?
How @acarvin and his Twitter followers debunked sloppy journalism

Fake News Used to Stir Violence

Tiajuana, Mexico

How Misinformation Fueled Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in the Tijuana Border Region

Estas fotos son falsas y se utilizaron en las redes para alimentar el rechazo a los migrantes

Rohingya

In 2017, for example, hateful posts on Facebook aimed at Myanmar’s Muslim minority Rohingya incited murder and rape, ultimately leading to the exodus of 700,000 members of this community and what the United Nations called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

In Sri Lanka, misinformation on Facebook exacerbated violence between Muslims and the country’s Buddhist majority. In this case, the Facebook-owned message application WhatsApp was used to organize violent mobs in several towns, burning mosques, businesses, and homes.

Real v fake: debunking the ‘drunk’ Nancy Pelosi footage – video
Footage of the Democratic House Speaker was edited to make her appear drunk or unwell, in the latest incident highlighting social media’s struggle to deal with disinformation. Compare the original footage with the viral clip

Third-party Fact Checking Organizations

First Draft News

Example from Electionland