There is no arguing that these days, news breaks on social media. And that’s a good thing. Still, social media timelines, comments sections and status updates cannot always be trusted, because these are the most common places where disinformation and fake news is debated and amplified. According to researchers who analysed posts in African users’ networks, the most common place for misinformation is social networks.
How do you know a story – or in this case, its accompanying visuals – is true? Trust? Influence? Experience? Viral information? Many users say they end up relying on their instinct to know if a story “feels” true, and if they can find it reported by other sources. But there are fact-checking tools and resources which work.
Which of these videos is real one depicting the crash-land of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s chopper yesterday in Kogi State? A video went viral on social media after the incident was announced, but was it the real video? We decided to fact-check. This thread shows what we found.
Using InVid’s video fragmentation analysis, we could place when the video was possibly taken and where.
We also verified the video of the Kabba incident shared by eyewitnesses.
Conclusion: the video that went viral was taken in Kati in Mali in January 2019. So how do you fact-check pictures and videos? We shared some tips in the thread as well. Most of these tools are available and free. Head to our twitter page: @NewsCentralTV for more.