MEDIA VERIFICATION GUIDE

1. Intro

Photos and videos play an increasingly important role in human rights investigations, either in partnership with field research or as evidence on their own. Whether obtained directly from a source or via social media, User Generated Content (UGC) can provide crucial information about abuses. But how do we check if the content is real? How do we confirm it’s not doctored or improperly labelled?

This basic guide offers practical tips to assess the accuracy of photos and videos. It presents the main questions to ask and some technical tools to answer those questions. The guide is by no means complete, but rather an introduction to UGC verification. For more information, a list of internal and external resources is provided at the end.

2. Key Questions

When we obtain information or content via social media, or have it sent to us, there are six key elements to check and confirm:

1.     Provenance: Is this the original piece of content?
2.     Source: Who uploaded the content?
3.     Date: When was the content captured?
4.     Location: Where was the content captured?
5.     Subject: What does the content portray?
6.     Motivation: Why did the uploader share the content?

As a first step, whenever feasible, try to establish contact with the original source, taking security concerns into account. Ask how they obtained the material and, if they recorded it themselves, where they were when they recorded it, what they saw, and other questions to understand the event and the context. If you cannot contact the source, assess their reliability by looking at their profiles and other postings.

3. Preservation

User-Generated content can be taken down quickly so preserve material promptly if you think it might serve a purpose. Some simple methods include:

Basic options for website preservation include:

Screen Grabs: on a PC, press “Alt + PrtScn”; on a Mac press “Shift-Command (⌘) + 3”.
Printing a PDF from your browser: Go to File > Print and choose “Save as PDF”

Basic options for video downloads include:

The KEEP program, which uses a Chrome extension

More advanced website preservation tools:

General Info:

Try to preserve the original photo or video – the first instance that the content was uploaded. Note that social media networks strip content of their metadata (see below). Try to preserve the highest possible quality of the content, which will look better and is more likely to have helpful metadata.

To ensure data integrity, do not alter the content, name or format of files. Store data on a USB stick or hard drive and make a backup. Document any provenance information related to your data, such as: how was it procured, who supplied it, by what means, and when. Store this information with the content itself.

4. Reverse Image Search

Images

Conduct a reverse image search to help determine whether the image has appeared earlier online. Two good tools exist, both of which allow you by uploading an image or by searching a URL.

a) Google Image Search (click on camera icon)
b) Tineye

Both Google and Tineye have Chrome extensions which allow you to conduct a search by right-clicking on the image. Another useful tool is the Reveye extension for Chrome, which facilitates a simultaneous search on Google, Tineye, Bing, Yandex and Weibo.

If a reverse image search does not produce results, use this language IN OUR PUBLIC REPORTING “The image does not seem to have appeared on the Internet prior to XXX.”

Video

It’s not possible to reverse-image search a full video. Instead, you must obtain screenshots or thumbnails of the video, preferably from the beginning of the clip or at key moments. Options to do this include:

a)    Pause the video and take a screen grab
b)    Pause the video and use the clipping tool
c)     Use Amnesty’s YouTube Data Viewer, which generates four thumbnails of the video to use in a search.

Or use the Invid Chrome Extension, which also generates thumbnails.

5. Upload times

Try to determine when the content was uploaded to the Internet.

For videos on YouTube, use Amnesty’s YouTube Data Viewer . For videos and photos on social media, note that upload times get marked differently:

a)    YouTube marks upload times in PST.
b)    Instagram marks upload times in PST.
c)     Facebook marks upload times based on the time on your device.
d)    Twitter marks upload times based on the time zone of your Twitter account settings. If you’re not logged in, then PST.

6. Geolocation

To help identify where a photo or video was recorded, cross reference visual clues with online maps and imagery. Use Google Earth, Google Maps and Wikimapia to identify recognizable features, such as distinct structures, vegetation and topography. If the Google Earth image is poor, try imagery from previous years. Position yourself where the camera would have been located, also using the street view option.

7. Details

Examine details in the content to assess veracity. These include the people who are portrayed, the uniforms they may be wearing, signs in the area, car registration plates, the location of shadows to indicate time. To check the weather at a certain place on a certain day, use Wolfram Alpha.

8. Metadata

Metadata tied to content can provide very useful information, such as GPS locations, date/time the image or video was taken, the recording device used, and the author. A number of tools exist to extract metadata, including:

Jeffrey’s Exif Viewer
YouTube DataViewer
Phil Harvey’s Exiftool

Note that social media platforms – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. – strip metadata from content.

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9. Vicarious Trauma

Watching disturbing material can have a serious impact on a person’s well-being, and in some cases cause secondary trauma. Only watch what is necessary, turn down/off the volume, reduce the window size, and take breaks. For more practical tips, see HRW’s guidelines for handling disturbing material.