Ethical issues for journalists in OSINT, investigation, and online verification * This post is based on a recent talk given at Trusted Media Summit 2020 that is also part of workshops on online investigation and verification given to journalists worldwide. …

The rules around using other people’s content have been muddied in the age of social media — for journalists, these 10 tips should help (* The tips and best practices provided in this article have been incorporated in the COVID-19 Social Monitoring Toolkit created by Fathm to help newsrooms deal…

When the torrent of mis- and disinformation is more than anyone can handle, you have to learn to pick and choose, or risk being overwhelmed by trivia It’s a regular conundrum for journalists and fact-checkers: they come across, or are sent, a post, video, photo, or meme that, on the…

“Where do I begin?” In years of training people to investigate content, information and sources online, it’s one of the questions I’ve heard the most. …

tl;dr Give your chats random, difficult-to-guess urls, and don’t think setting a password makes everything secure Let me start by saying: I use Jitsi regularly, I like it, and I think it’s a good thing that there’s an open-source alternative to the really big players. Also, if anyone knows of…

Knowing how to formulate effective searches can be a big help to your OSINT or verification efforts Despite the ubiquity of visual media, text is still arguably the backbone of the internet. Even sites that are primarily visual, such as YouTube, depend on it to keep organised. When searching for…

* What’s that font? On September 3, “Uncertified Ethical Hacker” Inti De Ceukelaire posted a Twitter thread drawing attention to a widely used tactic that still elicits shocked expressions every time you demonstrate it: As Inti pointed out, this trick is pulled off by substituting a lowercase “L” with…

Understanding how timestamps applied to online content are determined is very important to journalists and factcheckers. Misinterpreting the time a tweet, video or article was posted can lead to embarrassing mistakes. Most of us are familiar with timestamps — usually small, unobtrusive pieces of text accompanying posts — but it’s…

Everybody loves tools. It’s a basic instinct that probably kicked in around the moment the first caveman — or woman — realised that the jagged piece of flint they’d just stepped on would make skinning wildebeest much faster and more efficient. Fast-forward just a little, and the dawn of the…