How to investigate like a digital sleuth
The situation is intensifying between Russia and Ukraine. The latest news indicates that some journalists are being restricted from accessing areas in order to do their reporting.
Although I don’t work as a journalist with a news network currently, I think this is an important time to share some basic social newsgathering tips and skills with the public. Some of the tips and techniques I have in this article can, hopefully, help any journalist or citizen get the information they need to better understand whether something is real or not.
In this article, we’ll explore common ways to verify or debunk photos and videos using examples from January 2020.
How do you verify a photo?
Reverse image search is one of the best ways that you can easily check whether a photo is real or not. There are plenty of resources to help you determine the source of a photo. My favorite tool is TinEye, which is an image search and recognition website. The owners of the website state that they are experts in computer vision, pattern recognition, neural networks, and machine learning, which they use to help them decipher and analyze photos.
In January 2020, as tensions between the U.S. and Iran were increasing, Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar posted a photo of former President Barack Obama shaking hands with the Iranian president. "The world is a better place without these guys in power," he tweeted.
But was the photo actually real?
I downloaded the photo Rep. Gosar shared on Twitter, it has since been deleted, and I uploaded the image to TinEye. Immediately, the website brought up similar images, only many of these images were of President Obama and former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. I was also able to compare the photos and see that the color of the flag was changed, along with Singh being removed from the photo and swapped with a falsified image of Rhouhani. It turns out the original, undoctored photo was taken in 2011, which I was able to verify through reporting from news wires that published the photo back in 2011, and also White House archived records.
Fun fact: If you ever want to explore or learn more about White House photos, it’s helpful to check out the National Archives Catalogue where most of United States’ presidents’ diplomatic meetings and visits are photographed and stored on the website.
You also use this reverse image Google Chrome extension called RevEye, which I find really handy because you can easily right-click an image and reverse image search. The Chrome extension allows you to search images against different search engines like Yandex (Russian), Bing (Microsoft), and TinEye. Sometimes, this can be handy because different search engines yield different results.
How do you verify a video?
This is a bit harder. The first step is to watch the video all the way through. Ask yourself these questions:
What am I seeing in this video?
What are the landmarks? For example, do I see buildings in the background?
Are there street signs? If so, what language are they in?
Do I hear anything? Anyone speaking? If so, what language? What are they saying?
What time of day is it? What is the weather like in this video? For example, is it rainy or sunny or snowy?
Back in early 2020, tensions between the U.S. and Iran were rising. Then reports emerged of a plane possibly exploding over Tehran. Soon after, this video started circulating on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, claiming to show a passenger plane being shot down. Below is a short version of the original Telegram video.
Here’s how my former NBC team and I answered the following question:
What am I seeing in this video?
The video shows a flash of light in the sky above what looks like an area with white buildings or factories.
What are the landmarks? Do I see buildings in the background?
There are white buildings in the background. There appears to be a black, metal structure in the foreground, and possibly a fence.
Are there street signs? If so, what language are they in?
We don’t see any visible street signs.
Do I hear anything? Anyone speaking? If so, what language?
In the video, you hear a loud bang. And dogs barking after the bang.
What time of day is it? What is the weather like in this video? Is it rainy or sunny or snowy?
It’s not clear what the weather is like at this time. But it is nighttime.
Here’s what we know from official sources who spoke to NBC News or shared information publicly on verified social media channels:
Ukrainian passenger jet Flight PS752 went down after shortly departing Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport in Iran.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said in a public statement that 82 of the people on board were Iranian, 63 were Canadian and 11 were Ukrainian, including the nine crew members. Ten were from Sweden, four were from Afghanistan, three were from Germany and three were from the United Kingdom.
Western intelligence told reporters they believed a missile struck the plane
While leading my former team at NBC News, I was able to use visual clues from the video, and cross-check them against satellite imagery in order to identify the moment the plane was struck with an object in midair before crashing.
Here are the steps my former team and I took in order to verify this video:
Look up flight data: Every commercial airplane has a transponder, which gives information like a plane’s altitude and location to ATC. A transponder can help identify an airplane. It’s very hard, almost impossible, for a commercial plane to just disappear. That’s why the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was so troubling, because its transponder signal disappeared, and thus, so did the plane. Websites like Flight Aware and Flight Radar 24 can help you find planes based on information like flight number, location, and time of flight.
In order to verify whether the explosion in the Telegram video was actually of a plane, we first needed to determine when Flight PS752 was scheduled to take off from Imam Khomeini airport. Using Flight Radar we were able to locate the flight’s path, which shows that it was actively flying in the air for a short period of time after taking off from Imam Khomeini airport at night. This helps us know two things about the plane: It took off during the nighttime, so the sky was dark. And it was in the air for only a short amount of time, according to flight data from the transponder.
You can see that flight map below:
Satellite imagery: Next, we used Google Earth to look at the surrounding area near the Imam Khomeini airport, which is known as Parand, a planned city in Robat Karim County. We determined that we needed to look at Parand based on the flight path data.
Although we knew we needed to look at the region of Parand, we needed more help identifying where exactly to look because it is still a city with an area of 5.664 mi², therefore, we looked back at the Telegram video to see if we can find any visual clues. Remember we noticed those white buildings in the background? Well, if you zoom into Parand on Google Earth, you can see that there are a few places in the city where the building architecture looks very similar.
We went back to Google Earth and zoomed in closer to the city until we found a set of buildings that appeared to match the buildings in the Telegram video. We also noticed that this set of buildings had black metal structures nearby that looked similar to the ones in the video. Considering the flight information, and where directionally the plane was flying from, we were able to determine the approximate location of where the video was captured.
This helped us verify that the video did show footage from Parand. We found another video that was similar to this one, only we could hear someone in the video say the word “Ferdosiye," which is a city about 22 miles from Parand. And the debris of the plane was found in Khalajabad, the following morning, which is relatively close to both locations.
That’s how we were able to verify the Telegram video, which shows the moment a missile struck Flight PS752.
Applying social newsgathering techniques to verify Russia-Ukraine tensions
These two case studies are good exercises you can use to help prepare you if you’re hoping to learn more about the situation between Russia and Ukraine, or if you’re interested in learning more about other newsworthy events. For example, videos below surfaced in February 2022 on TikTok, allegedly showing Russian tanks (National Guard) heading towards the Ukrainian border.
Satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies (Maxar also provides satellite imagery to Google Earth, and publishes their findings on their public social media channels and sends them to news organizations) shows Russia amassing troops near Ukraine's borders.
TikTok videos have also emerged showing men dressed in military uniforms that look similar to Russian military uniforms. The video below shows some of these men gathering at a train station in Buynaksk, which is located in Russia’s southwestern Dagestan region. You can compare the building architecture at the train station to what is documented on Google Maps, Google Reviews, and Google Image Search. In addition, you can crosscheck this video with other photos of the train station that were published publically on social media accounts to help verify the location. As for the uniforms, you can also check the pattern and uniform style of the troops by taking a screenshot of the video and uploading it to TinEye. This reserve image search technique, which you can sometimes use even with a video thumbnail, can help you find similar images or identify patterns.
As you can see, we’ve applied some similar principles and techniques to the Russia-Ukraine TikToks as we did with the Iran case studies above. Investigating like a digital sleuth by using social newsgathering skills takes time and practice. But it’s important to keep in mind that the best investigators are persistent, skeptical, thorough, and think critically.
In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be publishing more content around how to conduct social newsgathering investigations. In the meantime, stay curious.
