A Masterclass on Combatting Lies

AUP’s Communication department hosted Nina Lamparski on April 6, for a talk with students and faculty about fact checking in the digital era. Lamparski has an extensive career in journalism, working at the United Nations and BBC World before her current role at Agence France-Presse (AFP) as head of the Africa division of AFP Fact Check, an award-winning operation that investigates online content to prevent disinformation and misinformation worldwide. 

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Launched in 2017, AFP’s fact checking organization is now the largest in the world, monitoring social media for false information and responding to public complaints for content that has been reported as untrue. It operates in over 24 languages on all five continents, focusing on widespread digital content that could be harmful or impactful if left unchecked. In 2021, AFP Fact Check published 8,589 checks, leading to an impressive 23+ verifications and debunks per day. 

Though I’ve used fact-checking platforms in past and often see warnings on social media posts for misleading or false content, I never knew who was in charge of these verifications or what happens behind-the-scenes to lead to a flagged post. Lamparski’s masterclass revealed the deep investigative work and creative techniques that she and her team uses to disprove false content and provide the truth. Besides using specialized technology like TweetDeck or CrowdTangle, the fact checking of viral photos and videos starts off simply, by identifying language, location, signs or buildings, usually by means of everyday tools like Google Earth and reverse image search.  

But this process is much easier said than done. Lamparski went into detail about the thorough work her team must do to properly identify the reality of misleading and false content. Often times, the videos or photos they receive are blurry, doctored or cropped, making the investigation of them complicated and extensive. Checkers can spend hours scouring a photo, identifying license plates, building names, uniform patches and even the people depicted to provide the most clear and transparent check possible.  

The content that they verify can be broken into different categories: satire, false content or context, doctored content, imposter content or fabricated content.

UPDATE: Our Editorial boards attention has been called to this post done by members of our team earlier today based on initial info that suggest it to be that of the incident in Shiroro LGA, Niger State some 3 days ago. In view of new info which suggest otherwise, we apologize. https://t.co/S3hVO5Djmv

— Eons Intelligence (@eonsintelligenc) April 4, 2022

For example, the fact check above done by AFP depicts a viral video that was tweeted with a caption claiming it depicted residents of Nigeria’s northern Niger state escaping from bandits in spring 2022. Using reverse video search, the AFP team identified that this was actually a video from June 2021 of people in Burkina Faso, fleeing the village Solhan following a deadly massacre. An AFP journalist in Burkina Faso confirmed the language being spoken was Moore, a language that isn’t spoken in Nigeria and the team further identified Saponé hats in the video, which are symbols of Burkinabe culture. Following the verification by AFP Fact Check, the original publishers removed the tweet and posted an apology. 

Not only was the AFP team able to identify that this video was not from the country it claimed to be, they also researched and found the correct nature of the video, a part of fact-checking that I’d not realized was so extensive.  

Lamparski identified a certain aspect of fact checking journalism that separates it from traditional journalism: collaboration and sharing information between fact checking groups is essential to the practice. A scoop or breaking story would never be shared between competing news organizations, but the commitment to truth by fact checkers means that sharing tools, knowledge and forming alliances is commonplace between operations.  “There’s enough stuff out there for everyone to sink their teeth into, and really the only way you can fight and tackle disinformation is by working together,” Lamparski explained in her presentation.  

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Recently, AFP Fact Check and other fact checking organizations under the International Fact-checking Network Signatories have collaborated to provide a database of fact checking for the war in Ukraine, which has provided more than 1,100 checks already. 

But a job like fact checking does not come without backlash. Labeling social media posts as misleading or false information results in posters sending many angry and even threatening emails. "It's super rare, like 1 out of 100, but there are people who say, ‘Thanks so much, I didn’t actually know this’. But most of the times the emails are angry,” Lamparski said. 

Unreliable information and misinformation isn’t exclusive to the digital world, nor to the past decade, but as social media has grown in prominence and any person is able to provide coverage of current events, incorrect information has become incredibly easy to spread. Following the demonization of media and mistrust of news in recent years, the establishment of resources for accurate information is essential to creating trust in the digital news world. Lamparski added that she hopes the use of the term “fake news” is left behind: “It implies that there is such a thing as real news and fake news. If something is news, it's news. If something is not news it’s a lie or disinformation." 

This masterclass was an incredible opportunity to learn about a new form of journalism, especially as the industry is so rapidly changing. Staying informed on the news is important, but finding and sharing accurate information is more so important for our future as news consumers.