Preparing Students for the Fight Against False Information With Visual Verification and Open Source Reporting

Abstract

While some journalists analyze and verify “open source” materials such as social media, eyewitness video, and satellite imagery to hold leaders and institutions accountable, many journalists and students are not learning basic digital verification skills. Research shows that journalists find this work challenging and that newsrooms do not consistently offer resources. Educators can fill this gap, and address problems the press faces in a post-truth age, such as student overtrust of digital sources, public distrust of the media, and the advancement of tools to fake visual information. This essay offers exercises and resources for educators in a variety of settings.

Keywords

journalism reporting social media classrooms visual communication

The Potential of Visual Verification and Open Source Reporting

At a time when social media has become a wellspring of false and misleading information, some journalists are increasingly analyzing text, photos, and videos from these platforms—and other “open sources” such as satellite imagery and maps—to debunk fake or false claims and bring verified information to their audiences.

The work of connecting the dots across multiple sources is not new to journalism, but the techniques have become more sophisticated in recent years, as access to verification tools and digital information, such as video evidence, has grown. Journalists and researchers working as digital sleuths have found new ways to hold leaders and citizens accountable for their actions and words.

Journalists at The New York Times recently used “forensic” reporting techniques to confirm the date, time, and location of a chemical weapons attack in Syria by analyzing information from Google Earth, amateur video, eyewitness accounts, and a sun movement app, SunCalc (Browne, 2017c). The resulting story debunked the claims of Russian and Syrian leaders. The paper’s visual investigations team used similar tactics to build a detailed video timeline of the Las Vegas shooting (Browne, 2017b; Vernon, 2017).

ProPublica and Frontline reporters also used hours of video footage and data from social media posts to name a hard-to-identify member of a violent White supremacist group, who held a national security clearance for his work with a defense contractor (Thomson & Winston, 2018b). A day after the report, the contractor, Northrop Grumman, fired the man (Thomson & Winston, 2018a).

Researchers from Bellingcat and Forensic Architecture used videos and photographs from online platforms to show that a Syrian building—where dozens of civilians were killed in a U.S. drone strike—was a mosque (Forensic Architecture, 2017; Triebert, 2017). Their evidence directly contradicted claims from U.S. officials that a mosque had not been targeted (Mackey, 2017).

These visual investigations are valuable because they hold the powerful accountable, but they also stand as a model for journalists in this post-truth era, when the public is quick to trust feeling over fact, and social media platforms contain vast amounts of false information, often constructed to evoke feeling. These projects serve as a reminder for journalists to be rigorously critical of digital sources, to be transparent about their reporting methods, and to provide details beyond the “he said, she said.”

Yet it is hard to imagine that visual verification and open source reporting will have a broader impact if no more than a few well-supported newsrooms adopt these techniques. It is essential then to understand whether journalists are learning and adopting verification strategies, and to examine practical methods of instruction.

Are journalists and students keeping up with basic digital and social media verification skills as the tools of this trade become more advanced? If not, what are the barriers to training and use? And how can these skills be taught to overcome any of these barriers?

To begin to address these questions, the author reviewed newsroom research and surveys, and also conducted interviews with working journalists, digital verification experts, journalism professors, and industry researchers. The author also collected methods for teaching verification from these sources and compiled lessons from her own teaching. Takeaways from this research, along with detailed suggestions for bringing verification into the classroom, are discussed in the following.

The Challenges for Journalists, Educators, and Students

For journalists, the act of verifying digital information has many barriers, from the cognitive to the temporal.

Research shows that journalists have a hard time “keeping up with the complex process of actually verifying online sources” (Backholm et al., 2017; Lecheler & Kruikemeier, 2016, p. 157; Schifferes et al., 2014). In particular, they find the verification of photos and videos to be difficult, and many do not have the skills to do this work (Brandtzaeg, Lüders, Spangenberg, RathWiggins, & Følstad, 2016).

It is not surprising that those without training have a hard time verifying visuals. A recent study found that people generally have a poor ability to determine whether a real-world image is original or has been manipulated (Nightingale, Wade, & Watson, 2017).

Human brains are wired to see photorealistic images as reality, and viewers are quick to believe the image content (Barry, 1997; Lazard, 2015). Viewers must be highly motivated to critically evaluate visuals, and often continue to believe what they saw, even if proven false (Barry, 1997).

Journalists often get duped by social posts claiming to show video or photos of a breaking news event. For example, during the 2018 cave rescue of a Thai soccer team, several newsrooms posted videos found on social media showing a dive rescue. The videos were actually of dive drills in France and Wisconsin from several years prior. Reporters could have avoided the mistake by tracing the origin of the video, and by noting that the water in the videos was crystal clear when the Thai cave site had near-zero visibility (Mashkoor, 2018).

Some researchers have highlighted the need for new tools and services to assist news gatherers with digital and social media verification (Backholm et al., 2017; Gregory, 2018; Schifferes et al., 2014). Specifically, journalists need help with the process of “identifying who is a reliable source, filtering out fake pictures and video content, and using geo-location to cross-check where individuals actually are” (Schifferes et al., 2014, p. 415).

But a recent survey of journalists in global newsrooms revealed that only 11% say they use social media verification tools and services, such as Storyful and Dataminr, even though some 71% use social media to find new story ideas (International Center for Journalists, 2017).

The same report showed that just under half of surveyed newsrooms provide training in social media research and verification.

Past reporting also suggests that while some journalism schools are incorporating digital and social verification in the classroom (Brown, 2015; Kruger, 2017) and as part of professional collaborations (“Electionland Wins Online Journalism Award,” 2017), this work is not taught consistently in journalism schools (Stearns, 2016). However, a more rigorous survey of universities would be beneficial (Stearns, 2016).

A lack of formalized training may stem from the fact that verification—while a core component of journalism—is not a standardized process but has long been an individual one (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2014).

There may also be a misconception among working journalists and students that they know a false tweet or photo when they see it, according to M. Jenkins, the former news director at Storyful (personal communication, July 31, 2018).

“Students are so fluent on social media, on a fun basis. They don’t think there’s anything more to learn,” said Jenkins. Working journalists do this too. “We get fooled all the time though,” said Jenkins (personal communication, July 31, 2018).

Indeed, newsrooms often lack formal guidelines regarding the validation of digital and social content (Backholm et al., 2017). Among local television newsrooms, for example, nearly 40% of those with social media policies said they did not include procedures for verifying social media content before inclusion in a newscast (Adornato, 2016).

There are consequences to this. For example, in Adornato’s 2016 survey, a third of local television news managers said that their stations had reported information from social media that was later found to be false or inaccurate.

Research suggests that journalists and newsrooms struggle to perform and standardize verification techniques for several other reasons, including limited financial resources (Backholm et al., 2017) and tight deadlines (Brandtzaeg et al., 2016).

Despite these limitations, journalists must find ways to tame and take advantage of the streams of information from social media and other open sources. As Schifferes et al. (2014) reported, if we do not help journalists spot misinformation, faked visuals, or inappropriate sources, “the use of social media as a source of news will be increasingly problematic” (p. 406).

However, practitioners have said that journalists are unlikely to stop using social media and user-generated content to tell stories.

“We can’t say we’re not going to do that anymore,” said Micah Gelman, the Washington Post’s director of video in a recent NiemanLab report (Bryant, 2018).

“What we need to admit is that like all great storytelling opportunities that come from technology, there is a risk, and it’s our job to make sure, to mitigate that risk and not make mistakes” (Bryant, 2018).

Teaching Visual Verification Can Combat Post-Truth-Era Problems

Scholars and educators say there is an opportunity for journalism programs to better prepare young journalists for the tasks of refuting false digital information and combining verified, open sources to tell new stories.

Teaching the next generation of journalists to be stronger visual verifiers and open source reporters may even tackle some of the problems the industry and the academy are facing in a post-truth era. These problems include,

student overtrust of digital and social sources despite being “digital natives”;

journalism’s tendency to rush and oversimplify stories, and the role this plays in polarizing the public and creating distrust of the media; and

the inability of newsrooms to keep up with the rapid development of artificial-intelligence-based tools used for faking videos and photos.

Specific lessons and resources to address these challenges are described in the sections that follow. The lessons are also designed to help students see the value of verification in their own lives and to make it a regular—and less time consuming—part of their reporting practice. Here is a summary:

To help students develop digital savvy and be more critical about what they find on social platforms, educators can offer a framework to identify the types of false information, and share examples. Students can learn simple verification strategies, such as finding a video’s origin, and practice techniques to cross-check their own personal information.

To help students slow down and avoid oversimplification, educators can present investigations that reported beyond what was said to show with eyewitness video and imagery what actually happened. Students can set up a virtual toolbox and practice the steps used in case studies. Students should write about their steps too, to practice being more transparent.

To help students keep up with techniques to fake photo and video content, educators can present recent examples of manipulated visuals and show students techniques for identifying them. Students can also report on advances in these “forensic” techniques.

Post-Truth Lesson 1—Help Students Develop Digital Savvy

Stanford University researchers recently found that thousands of middle, high school, and college students across the country consistently had trouble determining the credibility of digital and social-media-derived information (Wineburg, McGrew, Breakstone, & Ortega, 2016).

“Many assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally savvy about what they find there,” the researchers wrote. “Our work shows the opposite” (Wineburg et al., 2016).

Journalism educators have said too that they see similar traits among students, and that teachers should not assume they know how to use social media for journalistic purposes (A. Adornato; personal communication, August 1, 2018).

Educators can use basic verification training to help students become more skeptical of digital sources.

Map the Landscape of Problematic Digital Information

Before focusing on verification skills, offer students a conceptual framework for talking about false information and visuals. Researchers have suggested dropping the term fake news in favor of terms that better describe “the complex phenomena of information pollution” (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017, p. 5). The researchers recommend the following terms:

“Misinformation” is for false information that is shared, but no harm is meant;

“Disinformation” is for false information that is knowingly shared to cause harm; and

“Malinformation” is for genuine information that is shared to cause harm.

Social media verification experts say that much of the false information on social media is not deviously generated “disinformation.” False information is often “misinformation,” such as when citizens share visuals on social platforms that do not belong to them and may not actually represent what they say it does (M. Jenkins, personal communication, July 31, 2018).

“Ninety percent of the time, we are not dealing with Russian hackers,” said Jenkins, the former head of news at Storyful. “People want to be part of the conversation. They find an image or video and make an assumption that it’s tied to the story, and they share it. And then journalists use it” (personal communication, July 31, 2018).

Give Students Basic Strategies

Verification experts suggest focusing on basic introductory techniques from platforms and programs that many students are already familiar with (M. Browne, personal communication, July 11, 2018; M. Jenkins, personal communication, July 31, 2018). For example,

use advanced search techniques on Twitter, Facebook, and Google to display posts that occurred during a set timeframe or in a certain geographic location;

try methods for checking the location of a photo or video, using both time and location data embedded within the files, as well as satellite and street-level imagery from sources such as Google Earth Pro and Wikimapia;

explore tools to look at the provenance or origin of a visual, such as reverse image search engines from Google and Tin Eye; and

report on a source’s social media background using sites such as Spokeo, WhitePages, and Tweetdeck to help rule out bots.

First Draft offers video modules in each of these categories as part of a five-unit course for newsrooms and classrooms (Greason, 2018). Students can run through the videos and then try out the techniques on case studies, such as the Thai cave rescue videos compiled by Storyful (Mashkoor, 2018).

Experienced educators have said that it is also important to use relatable examples to help students see this work as attainable (A. Adornato, personal communication, August 1, 2018; C. Brown, personal communication, July 27, 2018). The complex open source investigations coming out of Syria, for example, may be a bit daunting to students (M. Jenkins, personal communication, July 31, 2018).

Instead, show students example videos that they may have seen—but did not verify—in their own social feeds. For example, in 2017, Twitter users claimed that a crowd photograph was an image from a Trump rally in Phoenix but the photo actually showed a massive rally in Cleveland after the Cavaliers’ 2016 NBA Championship (M. Jenkins, personal communication, July 31, 2018; Swenson, 2017).

Make Verification Personal

One way to get students interested in the act of verifying digital information is to show them what others can see about them. Students can

search for themselves or family on Spokeo or White Pages and make note of errors,

run a recent photo through Jeffrey’s EXIF viewer (http://exif.regex.info/exif.cgi) to see the “metadata” that can stay attached to the file,

use AllMyTweets.net to view a list of every tweet they have posted, and

look up their hometown on Google Earth Pro (https://www.google.com/earth) and look at the home they grew up in, from an aerial view and street-level perspective.

Post-Truth Lesson 2—Don’t Oversimplify and Be Transparent

Much of the American public does not trust the news media. According to the 2018 Gallup poll, only 45% of the country trusts media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly,” and that figure is just 33% among those under 30 (Jones, 2018).

A key factor in Americans’ distrust is that the public does not fully understand how journalists work (American Press Institute & The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 2018).

Journalism’s tendency to oversimplify the news can also erode trust in the press and amplify polarization among readers (Ripley, 2018).

Journalists (and students) could stand to make their work more complicated—and transparent.

Verification techniques and open source reporting can offer complexity. The methods can slow young journalists down, turn them away from chasing a one-tweet story, and encourage them to dig deeper for more voices and a wider view. Open source investigations can also help journalists move beyond what was said or tweeted, to connect the dots across many sources, and show what happened (M. Browne, personal communication, July 11, 2018; M. Jenkins, personal communication, July 31, 2018).

Transparency may also help journalists rebuild the public’s trust and work against claims that much of the news is “fake” (A. Adornato, personal communication, August 1, 2018; Bryant, 2018). Framing journalistic steps as detective work—think CBS’s CSI: Crime Scene Investigation—may even spark some interest from readers (C. Brown, personal communication, July 27, 2018).

Journalism professors can help students practice and experiment with these steps now, so that transparency and verification become a routine part of their practice.

Show Students the Potential of Looking to See What Happened

Young journalists often get caught in the trap of reporting what a source said, and do not always look to see for themselves what actually happened (J. Groves, personal communication, July 23, 2018). Sometimes, “taking a look” can involve digging through open sources, such as eye witness videos and satellite imagery.

To inspire students to report differently, professors can share the steps of an investigation that bypassed the one-tweet story model and pulled many sources together to discount what was said. The New York Times, for example, has a YouTube playlist (The New York Times, 2018) of its open source investigations, and its reporters often share backstories on major projects (Browne, 2017c; Browne, 2017b).

It is also valuable to help students see other, smaller opportunities to go beyond what was said and see for themselves. For example, ask students how they might determine whether electricity in Puerto Rico is still limited following the 2017 hurricane season, without making a phone call or reading a report. Then let students explore the free nighttime imagery offered by NASA’s EarthView app (https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/).

Streamline Student Workflow

Students and journalists sometimes avoid verification because they are overwhelmed by the time needed to do it. Adornato has relieved this pressure in his classrooms by encouraging students to work together on verification tasks (A. Adornato, personal communication, August 1, 2018).

Students can also try to streamline their process by setting up a simple virtual workstation (M. Browne, personal communication, July 11, 2018). This can be as easy as setting up your default browser window to a single page of tools, such as the verification toolbox offered for beginning verifiers by First Draft (https://firstdraftnews.org/verification-toolbox/).

With repetition, beginners can learn what works in certain circumstances and what does not (M. Browne, personal communication, July 11, 2018). Daily social media verification tasks can also help students quickly gain confidence in their skills (Kruger, 2017).

Follow Journalists Who Are Transparent and Try Their Methods

Some journalists have embraced transparency with readers and colleagues. Malachy Browne of The New York Times has shared his team’s steps from past open source investigations on Twitter (Browne, 2017a). Consider requiring students to detail their verification steps on social media platforms after they finalize an assignment (A. Adornato, personal communication, July 1, 2018).

Post-Truth Lesson 3—Keep up With the Fakers

NiemanLab recently reported that the technology to create false photos and videos is advancing at a rapid pace, and that newsrooms are not in a position to keep up (Bryant, 2018). The story shared recent examples of face-swapped videos known as “deepfakes,” including a viral video made with the program FakeApp, in which comedian Jordan Peele’s words came out of Barack Obama’s mouth (Bryant, 2018; Buzzfeed Video, 2018; Silverman, 2018).

While these faked videos have been used mostly for comedic or entertainment purposes, there is reason to worry that they could be used to harm citizens, by interfering in elections, spreading propaganda, or causing violence (Farid, 2018; Riechmann, 2018).

Techniques such as studying the mouth of the speaker or looking for unnatural blinking can help journalists avoid getting duped—for now (Riechmann, 2018; Silverman, 2018).

While the prospect of training students to detect “synthetic media” and inspiring them to hunt “deepfakes” may feel like an oversized challenge for untrained educators, there are some ways that journalism faculty can give young journalists—and their future employers—a leg up.

Report on “Forensic” Techniques and Experts

Even though the technology to create fake videos is likely to improve to a point beyond human detection, studying some current techniques for calling out manipulated visuals can still be valuable (Bryant, 2018; Gregory, 2018). Let students survey some viral deepfakes, and ask them to examine the subject’s mouth, eyes, and voice to identify anomalies. Students can watch the video frame by frame by pausing the video and clicking on the period key to move forward a frame and the comma key to move backward. Clicking on “J” and “L” can move the video back and forward 10 s as well.

Students can also study and write about future, potential techniques. Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientists, for example, are studying ways to use video magnification tools to visualize the pulse and blood flow of a subject in a video. This tool may be used someday to help debunk deepfakes, as faked videos may be less likely to display the subject’s natural pulse (Gregory, 2018).

Bellingcat keeps an extensive list of open-source investigative tools and techniques in a regularly updated Google document (Bellingcat, n.d.). In addition, professionals often swap research and verification tools and tips under the hashtag, #OSINT (M. Browne, personal communication, July 11, 2018).

Practice Looking at the Origin of a Video

As fake videos become less detectable with the human eye, experts say journalists will still be able to focus on the provenance or origin of the video as a means of verification (Bryant, 2018; M. Jenkins, personal communication, July 31, 2018). Students can practice determining the source of a deepfake, and question motivations and incentives (Bryant, 2018; Silverman, 2018).

First Draft offers video modules specifically focused on provenance (Greason, 2018).

Have Students Share Their Skills

There is an opportunity for journalism students to look beyond skill-building and to contribute to their communities by running workshops on false information and verification. Dozens of libraries around the country have already run “fake news” workshops for the public (American Library Association Public Programs Office, 2017; Central Connecticut State University, 2017; Cornell University Library, 2017).

Verification experts and open source investigators have noted that journalists have a civic responsibility to inform the public about the threats of false information and offer transparency about their process (Bryant, 2018; Gregory, 2018). Getting students to see their education not just as job training, but as a key part of a functioning democracy, is also a critical task for educators in a post-truth world (Peters, 2017).

Conclusion

At a time when media platforms are awash with false and misleading information, are newsrooms and classrooms doubling down on the verification of digital information?

A review of newsroom research and surveys reveals that only a small share of journalists use social media verification tools and services, and that few newsrooms provide formal guidelines or training (Backholm et al., 2017; International Center for Journalists, 2017). Colleges and universities do not consistently offer verification training, although a more rigorous and up-to-date survey of undergraduate and graduate programs would be valuable (Stearns, 2016).

Research also shows that journalists and students face barriers to adopting verification techniques. When it comes to visuals, humans are naturally wired to believe what they see and struggle to combat this tendency, even once a visual is proved false or manipulated (Barry, 1997; Lazard, 2015). The time needed to verify information, the costs of training, and a lack of awareness of techniques are other limitations (Backholm et al., 2017; Brandtzaeg et al., 2016).

A sense among journalists and students that they know fake material when they see it may also play a role (M. Jenkins, personal communication, July 31, 2018).

Educators and journalists should work to overcome these barriers, to combat some of the challenges they face in this period of post-truth. Research shows that the public is quick to trust digital sources (Wineburg et al., 2016), when the potential to fake information has never been greater (Bryant, 2018). Many younger people do not trust the media (Jones, 2018), and experts say that journalism’s tendency to oversimplify may further deepen the public’s distrust (Ripley, 2018).

Educators may find verification daunting without training, but there are many free resources available, including video tutorials (Greason, 2018). The suggested lessons in this essay can help students develop more digital savvy, slow and deepen their reporting, and prepare them for the faked visuals of the future. The lessons are also designed to help students see the value of verification in their own lives and to make it a more comfortable and less time-consuming part of their reporting practice.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Amy Schoenfeld Walker is an assistant professor of journalism at Quinnipiac University. She teaches digital reporting and design, data journalism, and community engagement. Walker is a former New York Times journalist.

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