Several image of army and tanks are seen on UK streets was spreading rapidly on WhatsApp and social media recently, as there was rumours that London will be lockdown soon. However, there is no evidence to suggest the military is being used to impose a lockdown in London.
While the outbreak of COVID-19 getting severe, in March, there is a wave of misinformation on social media. Unverified health information went viral on the platform which people shared them with their friends and families under the fear of the unprecedented disease.
Although Facebook and Twitter has taken action on fake news and misinformation on its main platform, Whatsapp, the most popular messaging app in the world, is hardly to detect rumors spreading in private chats.
However, there are couples steps of basic fact checking that you could do before sharing the news and images.
Reverse image search: Find out where the image from
As people are getting used to sharing and duplicating images online, reverse image search could be powerful to recognise if your content is original. Here are some powerful tools you should not miss.
TinEye is an image search recognition engine which is widely used by journalist. It could search the image you upload by comparing with its enormous image dataset.
Google Image Search is another powerful engine for detecting a duplicate image. You also could access this service on mobile by clicking the browser menu “request the desktop site”.
Yandex is another search with its strength on searching images across Russia and East Europe countries.
Check the detail of image from EXIF data
Sometimes you might not find any information about the image through the search engine, however, clues usually could be found behind the image.
EXIF (Exchangeable Image File) is a format storing interchange information in digital photography image files which using JPEG compression. You can use Exifdata or Jeffrey’s Image Metadata Viewer find out when and where the image was generate.
Look for the visual clues
An alternative way if you still can’t find any evidence through the tools, is to use your general knowledge, such as the flags, or the signs and the side of road. These visul clues can help you narrow your search to a region, country or city.
In the case of rumors about army was marching to London, it was clearly that the side of road was wrong, suggest that this picture was not taken in Britain.
Map it if you know where it is
Since you identify the geolocation of the photo, Google Map could be a excellent tools to do the fact check. Its satellite imagery could lets you zoom in on and rotate different views, and the street view function allows you to check the changes of street over time.
Wolfram alpha is another powerful verification tools providing you the direct answer of your question, influding the flights detail and the weather of London three years ago. You could use this tool for searching the changes in any place in anytime.
FirstDraft also provide a guidelines of image verification. By using this document, you could be more confident on veryfying the image and information from the source.
Think again before you share it
To stop the spread of disinformation, the most useful way is not sharing it before you verify it. Use these tips to fight the disinformation disease, or you can find more tutorial and tools in the links below.