When the telephone first entered the newsroom journalists were sceptical. “How can we be sure that the person at the other end is who they say they are?” The question seems odd now, because we have become so used to phone technology that we barely think of it as technology at all – and there are a range of techniques we use, almost unconsciously, to verify what the person on the other end of the phone is saying, from their tone of voice, to the number they are ringing from, and the information they are providing.

Dealing with online sources is no different. How do you know the source is telling the truth? You’re a journalist, for god’s sake: it’s your job to find out.

In many ways the internet gives us extra tools to verify information – certainly more than the phone ever did. The apparent ‘facelessness’ of the medium is misleading: every piece of information, and every person, leaves a trail of data that you can use to build a picture of its reliability.

The following is a three-level approach to verification: starting with the content itself, moving on to the context surrounding it; and finishing with the technical information underlying it. Most of the techniques outlined take very little time at all but the key thing is to look for warning signs and follow those up.

Level 1: Content

At its most basic level, alarm bells should ring if the information you’re looking at is simply too good to be true. The disgruntled sacked employee who makes lights up the exterior of Harrods with a farewell message fits this category. Ask yourself: would this really happen? And if so, who else would have known about it?

If the information is coming through social media you have to ask: is this bait? Jan Moir’s Twitter ‘apology’ is one good example – lending itself to easy retweeting. Peter Serafinowicz’s ‘deleted’ offensive joke is another. So are various Facebook rumours, such as paedophiles who want you to change your profile picture, or party gatecrashers, and the occasional protesting Facebook group. And forum rumours (sometimes placed intentionally to expose journalists who plagiarise without giving their source). And press releases.

Embarrassing emails that go viral can turn out to be PR tricks. Video diaries can be revealed as new forms of narrative. Spectacular video footage can turn out to be more PR (by the way, read through that thread to see how it is infiltrated by a PR person but their identity is challenged). Check the facts, and see what other people have uncovered. And click on all of these links: the more hoaxes you are familiar with, the more likely alarm bells are going to ring at the right time.

The frequency and recency of information will give you a clue as to its veracity: the more recent the information, the more up to date it is likely to be (although it may be based on out of date information – trace it back to its source). And the more frequently a source is updated (over a long period of time), the less likely it is to come from an opportunistic hoaxer. You can get browser bookmarklets that tell you when a webpage was last updated (as well as many other pieces of information).

Finally does the style and personality of the information match the supposed source? Do they write in the same tone? Do they make spelling mistakes?

For images look for cloning and airbrushing. Cloning is the replication and repetition of small areas of a photograph to, for instance, make a crowd look bigger by duplicating faces; make an air attack look more dramatic by adding extra plumes of smoke, or to make an operations room look more active by filling blank screens.

Airbrushing is the removal of details – the Harrods image mentioned above was most likely created in this way, by removing lights so that those remaining spelled out the message. Also worth watching for are composite or staged images, such as the various Google Street View hoaxes.

This article suggests that inconsistent lighting, eye shapes and light reflections within eyes are all good clues to look for as well. And this related infographic allows you to explore how one image has been retouched. This article by Judith Townend goes into more detail about spotting manipulted images.

Level 2: Context

Social media lends itself particularly well to verification because, in our activity in social networks, we effectively verify each other. If your information comes from a social network account, ask yourself some of these questions:

How long has the account existed? If it’s only existed since a relevant story broke (e.g. Jan Moir’s column; an earthquake where someone claims to be a witness) then it’s likely to be opportunistic.

Who did the person first ‘follow’ or ‘friend’? These should be personal contacts, or fit the type of person you’re dealing with. If their first follow is ReadWriteWeb, then it may be that you’re not actually dealing with a Daily Mail columnist.

Who first followed them? Likewise, it should be their friends and colleagues.

Who has spoken to them online? Ditto.

Who has spoken about them? Here you may find friends and colleagues, but also people who have rumbled them. But don’t take anyone else’s word for their existence unless you can verify them too.

Can you correlate this account with others? The Firefox extension Identify is a useful tool here: it suggests related social network accounts which you can then try to cross-reference. For companies the Chrome extension Polaris Insights does something similar for companies.

For Twitter you might also try other tools including PeerIndex and Klout, both of which use algorithms to give extra information on the ‘human-ness’ and content of particular accounts. On Facebook there is the social commenting plugin which attempts to give a credibility score to commenters.

Finally, of course, you should try to speak to the person. Phone their office or their employer and confirm whether they do indeed have the account in question.

For websites the checks are broadly similar. On Google you can use the advanced search facility to look for other pages that link to the one you’re checking. These might include other website that have rumbled the hoax before you – or are bragging about it.

Similarly look what links the webpage contains to other sites: does this fit what you would expect? The browser bookmarklets mentioned above will collate these for you. At this point we’re starting to move onto the third level…

Level 3: Code

First, look at the website address. If it is purporting to be a governmental website it should end in .gov, .gov.uk etc. Health websites may end in .nhs, police in .police, defence in .mod and so on. Academic websites should end in .ac.uk or .edu but this is no guarantee: less reputable ‘establishments’ have managed to obtain web addresses with these extensions. And of course .com addresses offer no guarantees.

Murray Dick gives more advice on the other elements of a web address, and recommends using an open directory to check your searches, as these are maintained by people, not computers, are less likely to contain hoax websites.

Use a Whois service to find out who the web address is registered to. This isn’t immune to fakery but the hoaxer may not have thought about it, and if the details are hidden you may wonder why. Try variations of the domain – when the viral ‘Labservative’ campaign first began it was not clear who was behind it, and I started by looking at Whois details – the company had kept their details private for the .com address, but they had forgotten to do so for the .co.uk variation. I then called up the company and tried to call their bluff by asking who was managing the campaign.

If you are asking for emails verifying a story, make sure you are forwarded the original email, and not a screengrab, and follow this process to check the IP address of the email against who it’s supposed to be from.

Archives and caches can be useful to compare the latest version of a webpage with older versions. Conducting a relevant Google search and clicking on ‘cache’ next to the relevant result can show up recent changes. The Internet Archive‘s Wayback Machine (recently revamped) can give you snapshots going further back. On Wikipedia and other wiki-based sources, look for ‘history’ and ‘discussion’ links where you can see what changes have been made and the discussions about those.

For images you can check out the EXIF data – this is information about when the image was taken, on which camera, and with what settings. This online tool (there’s a Chrome extension too) allows you to quickly see the EXIF data on any web-based image. This information is best used when speaking to the photographer – ask them when to give you the details that you can verify against the EXIF data. This isn’t a foolproof method but it will screen out most hoaxers.

Some news organisations – such as the BBC, in its UGC hub – have systems that look for Photoshop modification (not necessarily a sign of hoax – a user could simply have cropped or lightened an image). You can also see this yourself by looking under “details” > “origin” > “program name”. JpegSnoop will provide more details on images. Error Level Analysis is another useful tool to detect possible alteration, although it’s not perfect.

Finally, right-click on the page and view the source code. Occasionally hoaxers intentionally leave clues here, but you can also find other clues such as the author, date, location, and technologies used.

Any other techniques?

Those are just the techniques and tools that I can call to mind but I’m sure there are others I’m not aware of. Any you can suggest?

UPDATE: The BBC College of Journalism’s post on verifying content adds some other useful tips on cross-verification with maps, weather reports and other details.

Was the campaign against Jan Moir that crashed the PCC website “heavily orchestrated”? Jan Moir herself thinks so. Was it “organised”? The deputy editor of the Telegraph said it was.

If this was the case, who was organising this? “The big gay who runs the internet“? Stephen Fry?

And what do they mean by organised?

Let’s start with 3 definitions:

1. Functioning within a formal structure, as in the coordination and direction of activities.
2. Affiliated in an organization, especially a union.
3. Efficient and methodical.

Of the 3 descriptions, the only one that might apply in this case is the third, and here’s the rub. Imagine the Jan Moir fuss in a world without Twitter: here’s how it unfolded:

1. Some people read the Jan Moir article and are offended; they forward it to their friends to express disgust.
2. People complain to the PCC. They also complain to advertisers.
3. After a while the expressions of disgust reach a celebrity, and a columnist.
4. The celebrity mentions the article during a public appearance; the columnist writes a column about it. The columnist mentions the parts of the Press Complaints Commission code that the article breaks. Politicians pick it up too.
5. More people complain. They also complain to advertisers.
6. The ‘offence’ over the article now becomes a story in itself; the celebrity angle is key to selling the story.
7. More people complain. They also complain to advertisers.

In a world without Twitter the above might unfold over a series of days. The difference in a world with Twitter is that the above process is accelerated beyond the ability of many people to see, and they think Step 4 is where it begins.

But why does it matter if it’s organised?

But of course this isn’t about definitions, but about the discourse of what ‘organised’ means in this context. It means ‘not spontaneous’; it means ‘not genuine’; it means ‘not valid’.

Although different people may have different (oppositional, negotiated) readings I would argue this is the dominant one, where the discourse of ‘organised’ is being used to marginalise the protests. I will make a bet here that the PCC use that discourse in how they deal with the record numbers of complaints.

Stef Lewandowski hit the nail on the head when he said that it sounded “like the argument from design applied to social media”.

Help me investigate this

But what would be really interesting here is to test the hypotheses against some evidence: I want to see just how organised the ‘campaign’ was. How important were the celebrities and the formal organisations?

I’m using Help Me Investigate to see if we can work out what level of organisation there was in the campaign. So far, thanks to Kevin Sablan we have a key part of the evidence: all the #janmoir tweets since October 14. And some suggestions on how to analyse that from Ethan Zuckerman (who’s been here before): “grab all #janmoir tweets, do word freq. analysis esp on RTs, look to see if it’s grassroots or one instigator, amplified…”

If you need an invite, let me know.

And if you have any ideas how you can measure the organisation of a campaign like this, I’d welcome them.

The fake Jan Moir lays some too-good-to-be-true bait on Twitter

If you were following the Jan Moir-Stephen Gateley story that was all over Twitter today you may have come across a Twitter account claiming to be Jan Moir herself – @janmoir_uk. It wasn’t her – but it was a convincing attempt, and I thought it might be worth picking out how I and other Twitter users tried to work out the account’s legitimacy.

The too-good-to-be-true test

The first test in these cases is the too-good-to-be-true test, and this works on a number of levels. Jan Moir tweeting in itself was a great story – but not completely unbelievable. Her second tweet said “I have been advised by my editor to create a twitter account and offer my sincere apologies for any upset and distress i have caus” [sic] – a superficially plausible story. Would you buy it?

But there were some other too-good-to-be-true claims in her tweets. One said “My son is gay. I am not homophobic. Please read my article properly.” Does Jan Moir have a son? Is he gay? Would she announce it on Twitter?

And finally, the promise of a formal apology and the tweeted apology itself ticked the too-good-to-be-true box.

Style and personality

Jan is a journalist, and so is unlikely to use a lower case ‘i’ to refer to herself, regardless of the medium. She would also probably capitalise Twitter. And a later tweet uses the phrase “heart felt” which should be one word. Not all journalists have impeccable grammar, but this should raise suspicions.

More suspicious is the fact that the link she gives to her statement takes us to… The Independent newspaper. Would a Mail journalist link to a competitor?

Finally, Jan uses the hashtag #janmoir – unusual on someone’s first day using Twitter – although you might suggest a more experienced user was guiding her.

Who’s following?

One of the first things to check with a potential hoax account is who is following them. If they genuinely work for the Daily Mail, you could expect other staffers to be following them, or official accounts. That wasn’t the case here.

Who’s she following?

Likewise, is this account following the sort of people you would expect, particularly the first few? In this case the first person followed was an American footballer, followed by a US government agency, ReadWriteWeb, Wired magazine, the LA Lakers, 50 Cent, Flaming Lips and various others. That was a real alarm bell. At best they might have been followed on her behalf by a tech support person who was helping her, but more likely is that the hoaxer is either leaving clues or – more likely – following accounts that are likely to get them noticed. The numbers of tech websites in the list suggest that the latter was the case.

Messages to/about them

Who’s talking to this account? What are they saying? Again, if this person genuinely works for the Daily Mail there may be others there talking to her; conversely, if this is a fake account people may be pointing to proof of that fakery.

Suspicious behaviour (bait)

This is similar to the too-good-to-be-true test – the promise of a formal apology and an appearance on Channel 4 News were teases – bait to get people to retweet. And it worked. But ask: why was Channel 4 not talking about the interview they’d supposedly obtained? (After all, this was the top trend on Twitter for a while) Why was Jan Moir issuing apologies on Twitter, and not in a more ‘official’ setting? What was lacking here was…

External verification

This was what really sealed it with @janmoir_uk  - she said she would be appearing on Channel 4 News that night to apologise. A couple of Twitter users asked Channel 4 reporter Krishnan Guru-Murthy whether this was true. “No,” he replied, twice (h/t Todd Nash for pointing me to this). Of course you could have called The Daily Mail to check, too…

Anything else?

What techniques have you used to verify the authenticity of Twitter accounts? It would be great to compile more examples.

UPDATE: It seems even ‘Verified’ Twitter accounts can turn out to be fakes, such as that pretending to be the wife of Rupert Murdoch, Wendi Deng. Note her tweet below about the clues she left.

The Fake Wendi Deng points out her Twitter clues

Now anyone whose reads me knows I like video .. So watch this …

N’kay. All done?

Jan Moir is a Daily Mail columnist whose printed words have today caused her to reach for her boss’ PR agency (because of an Internet revolt that Twitter was at the heart of that blew up the Press Complaints Commission’s website) in order to say she’s not what you think she is.

That is significant. Today was significant. Social media made this happen – apparently the Mail doesn’t usually respond within hours to outrage at its contents.

But listen to what Richard Yates, from black experience, is telling you – focus on what they said, not who you think they are.

And this is very relevant to this situation. The Mail, and others, publish Moir’s sort of rant all the time. In the official ‘process’ it will be judged on what she said, not who she is accused of being.

If what we want is what she (and others) write banished from the mainstream, not to silence but to place them firmly on the fringes, then how is that achieved?

How do we define her words? I ask, is what she wrote heterosexist or is it homophobic?

Cue Wikipedia:

Heterosexism is a term that applies to negative attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships. It can include the presumption that everyone is heterosexual or that opposite-sex attractions and relationships are the norm and therefore superior.

Homophobia (from Greek homós: one and the same; phóbos: fear, phobia) is defined as an “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals”, or individuals perceived to be homosexual; it is also defined as “unreasoning fear of or antipathy toward homosexuals and homosexuality”, “fear of or contempt for lesbians and gay men”, as well as “behavior based on such a feeling”.

I don’t think Jan Moir is about fear, she’s about superiority. I think this because that’s what she wrote.

Yates is laying out for us how, exactly, we undermine the sort of power which a Moir (there’s a type) wields, especially including their power in claims of ‘victim’ or ‘silencing’. Here’s a template, from other minorities, which should be grasped in order to define her as ‘fringe’, ‘extreme’, someone who says she’s superior.

Drop ‘Moir is homophobic’ for ‘Moir is heterosexist’.

That’s my contribution to the aftermath of today: Learn from others and be precise in attacking power.

Make them go look ‘heterosexist’ up and in the process completely change the coming debate over ‘silencing free speech’, the ‘power of the mob’ and the ubiquitous raising of that cop-out phrase ‘PC’.