How to find out if a photo or video is fake news – The steps

“The news is in your hands”, say many of its users social media for the convenience that exists in the age of new technologies, smartphones and the internet, so that each and every one of us becomes a potential pile of the events that take place in front of him. Whether we are talking about a funny mound on the street, or the bombing of an apartment building in Ukraine war.

What we need to keep in mind is that social media is used not only by ordinary users but by entire media organizations, government agencies, the army and the police and is used several times whenever they want and as it suits the circumstances.

A few days earlier and before the war broke out in Ukraine after the Russian invasion We have mentioned again that modern transnational tensions do not have only tanks and weapons as a front.. But social media, fake news, and even comments below news site posts.

The question is what can we do on our part not to fall victim to it misinformation and not to become so unwittingly part of the dispersal chain fake news. Especially as long as the situation in Ukraine remains deplorable. The answer is enough. And without requiring highly specialized technical knowledge.

1. Check the source

We start with the basics. Check the source of the video or photo. If it is a common account then we play crown letters to really relate to what it shows.

At a time when many people are turning to social media for news, it has never been more important to control the sources. Is it a reputable news organization? Can you find the same pictures elsewhere with a similar description? If so, the image or video is more than likely to be real.

Individuals can also be trusted when following the Russia-Ukraine crisis, you just have to check their credentials. Someone like Eliot Higgins is a great example. The Bellingcat organization has compiled a spreadsheet directly related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The authoritative news agency Nieman Lab also wrote an article that includes some reliable sources for people who want to watch the Russia-Ukraine crisis. The BBC, CNN as well as the Australian Associated Press, RMIT / ABC and the French News Agency (AFP) are doing a great job of fact checking.

Social media platforms have added new tags to identify who the state media organizations are or to provide more information about the sources and individuals on the networks who have shared a particular story.

They have also modified their algorithms to change the content and have hired staff to detect and identify misleading content. The platforms also carry out background work to detect and post information about official government functions and information.

2. We learn how the reverse search of an image works

Many of the photos and videos of the Russia-Ukraine conflict posted on social media are fake. People share videos from years ago or in some cases from a different conflict altogether. Are there things you can check out by watching a video — for example, is it really grainy or old? In this case it may be fake.

But another reliable way to check when the media was published is to reverse the image search. The News Literacy Project, a non-profit organization, offers an instructional video on how to do this.

You can do a reverse image search through Google by clicking Images in the upper right corner of the search engine.

Click the camera icon in the search bar, and then there are two ways to search by image: Via the image URL or the image file you want to search.

Using the image URL, right-click on the image and Copy the image position (this language may differ depending on your browser). Paste it in Google Image Search and it will search the image online.

You can also do a Google search for Image Upload: Save the image to your hard drive and browse to this folder, select the file and Google will do a reverse image search.

Take a look at the results and keep in mind that the original Google result is not necessarily something you can trust. However, if you look at the “visually similar images” of Google, you can see if the image was uploaded to a trusted site, such as a major news source or the site of a fact-finding agency.

This step requires slightly more advanced technical knowledge. A Telegram post claims that Polish-speaking saboteurs attacked a sewer system in an attempt to place a chlorine tank there in a distraction.

However, the metadata of the video – the details of how and when the video was created – show that it was shot days before the supposed date of the event.

To check the metadata yourself, you can download the file and use software such as Adobe Photoshop or Bridge to test it. There are also metadata viewers on the internet that allow you to check using the image url.

One drawback to this approach is that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter often remove metadata from photos and videos when they upload to their sites. In these cases, you can try browsing the original file or consulting data control sites to see if they have already verified the video.

4. Check for inconsistencies

Does the supposed time of day match the direction of the light you would expect at that time, for example? Do the clocks shown in the picture correspond to the supposed period indicated?

You can also compare other data, such as the schedule of some policy activities, Google Earth vision images, or Google Maps, to verify that these claims are true.