Evert van Bolhuis, Pieter Prins, Marina Martin and Margot Verleg Do you trust your social media feed? Workshop at BOBCATSSS 2017

1. TrusttheSource
Do you trust your social media
feed?

2. #Pizzagate
A post on Twitter led to a
conspiracy theory about a
pedophilia network inside a
Pizza parlor in Washington DC
involving the Clinton Family.
A 28 year old man used a gun
inside the restaurant to free the
captured childeren

3. Pieter PrinsEvert van Bolhuis
Margot VerlegMarina Martin

4. 4
How and why
misinformation spreads
2. Introduction
1. Whisper Game
And the methods that are
used used to collect the
data
3. Boston Bombing
Importance of
factchecking
5. Fact-checking
Traditional methods of
factchecking
6. Verification Handbook
That help you factcheck
social media posts
7. Verification Tools
Workshop
Table of content
4. Role-playing

5. 5
Energizer
The wisper game
1. Line up in a straight line
2. We will give you one sentence
3. Take the wisper untill it’s in the front of the line
4. The first person will write the rumor down on a
paper

6. 6
Definition Misinformation: misinformation is a
false or inaccurate form of information that
spread either intentionally or unintentionally.
What is misinformation?
Misinfomation
The world economic forum named misinformation as
one of the top 10 treaths that our society is facing
Definition: Disinformation any government
communication
containing intentionally false and misleading material

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Why do rumors spread?
Misinfomation
Sort of rumors:
• Dread rumors
• Wish rumors
• Wedge driving rumors
When rumors spread
• Uncertainty
• Anxiety
• Believing
• Importance
• Improving self image
• Social status

8. • People want to help
• People want to make sense of the
world
• People want to feel part of the shared
experience
• To gain revenue
Misinformation
Why do people spread
misinformation?

9. 9
Echo chambers
Misinformation
Nature Climate Change 5, 782–786 (2015)

10. 10
Echo chambers on social media
Misinformation
“The goal of News Feed is to deliver the right content
to the right people at the right time so they don’t miss
the stories that are important to them.” (Backstrom,
2013)

11. The 2013 Boston Marathon was marked by
two bombs that were detonated at the finish
line killing three people and injuring 264.
Both the FBI and Boston PD used Twitter to
reach out to the public to inform them of what
was going and what to do.
After three days, photographs and
surveillance video of two suspects were
released by the FBI to seek the public’s help
to identify them.
BOSTON BOMBING
Case Study

12. 12
BOSTON BOMBING
Case Study
Internet users used social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit
as a primary sources of real-time news after the bombings.
• At 2:59 PM the Boston Globe shared the first tweet about the
bombings
• At 4:10 pm there were more than 300,000 mentions on Twitter of
“Boston explosions.”
• Around 4:30 pm, there were more than 700,000 mentions on Twitter of
the “Boston Marathon.”
• All of the rumors followed the six reasons under what sort of situations
rumors spread more.

13. 13
The first rumor was a photo of a girl
killed while running in the marathon.
@NBCNews announce that an 8 year
old spectator was killed
@TylerJWalter assumed that was a girl
and a participant of the marathon
@_Nathansnicely share the rumor with a
picture
Girl Killed While Running in the Marathon
Rumor
Boston case

14. 14
• This rumor was credible and had more repercussion because it was started by the NBC
News
• The original rumor was retweeted 33 times, but it soon began to spread in many different forms,
from different authors
• 93,353 tweets contained both “girl” and “running”
• 92,785 tweets were related to the rumor
• 90,668 of these tweets were coded as misinformation
• 2046 tweets were corrections
• Corrections occurred almost at the same time as misinformation due to community response
Girl Killed While Running in the Marathon
Rumor
Boston case

15. 15
Users of 4chan and Reddit collected images of
suspicious individuals wearing backpacks at the
scene after the FBI released pictures of dark,
exploded backpacks.
Pictures were spread included two men carrying
heavy dark backpacks. They were affiliated with
U.S. military special operations, specifically Navy
SEALs.
After relate the FBI pictures with the Navy SEALs,
speculation claimed the bombings had been a
“false flag” attack by the U.S. Government.
False Flag Rumor
Boston case

16. 16
False Flag Rumor
Boston case
• This rumor made people feel important
• There were 4525 tweets in total
• 3793 of these tweets were misinformation
• 212 tweets were corrections
• 520 tweets were coded as other, most of those being unrelated

17. 17
The FBI released photographs of the
suspects.
Twitter users claimed that Tripathi, an 22
year old missing student, could be a
suspect.
The FBI had to release the names of the
real suspects sooner because the family of
Tripathi recieved death treaths
.
Sunil Tripathi Rumor
Boston case
www.yourcompanyname.com

18. 18
• This rumor helpt people with their
social status
• There were 29,416 tweets
• 22,819 of the tweets were misinformation
• 4485 of the tweets were corrections
Sunil Tripati Rumor
Boston case

19. What are social media doing to stop
misinformation?
“We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves” – Mark Zuckerberg

20. PRESENCE OF HASHTAG AND URL
How to identify false tweets

21. NUMBER OF FOLLOWERS AND RETWEET STATUS
How to identify false tweets

22. VULGARITY, ABREVIATIONS AND EMOTICONS
How to identify false tweets

23. When you walk through the city and see this,
what would you tweet?
Tweet the situation
Workshop

24. Tweet the situation #2
Right after seeing the situation on the photo
before, you now seeing this. What would you
tweet?

25. Tweet the situation #3
You walk to the next street and see this. What
would you tweet?

26. 26
Fact-checking

27. 27
• Put a plan and procedures in place
• The path to verification can vary
with each fact.
• Verify the source.
• Never parrot or trust sources.
Fundamentals
Verification handbook

28. 28
Verification handbook
• Challenge the sources
• Triangulate
• Ask yourself, “Do I know enough to
verify?”
• Collaborate with team members
and experts; don’t go it alone.
Fundamentals

29. 29
How can we verify this video?

30. 30
Spokeo people search engine that can find individuals by name,
email, phone or username

31. 31

32. 32

33. 33
Step 1: Confirming the authenticity
Verification handbook
Provenance: “Is this the original
piece of content?”
Run a number of checks on that
profile to make sure it is real
www.yourcompanyname.com

34. 34
Step 1: Provenance
Verification handbook
Provenance: “Is this the original
piece of content?”
Run a number of checks on that
profile to make sure it is real
Confirming the authenticity
www.letmetweetthatforyou.com

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Step 1: Provenance
Verification handbook

36. 36
Step 2: Check the source
Verification handbook
Source: “Who uploaded the
content?”
The ultimate goal when attempting to
verify UGC is to identify the original
uploader and get
in touch with them
UGC = User Generated Content
A large amount of data of social media, mostly
unfiltered, unverified and unstructured

37. 37
Step 3: Verifying the date
Verification handbook
Date: “When was the content
created?”
When you know the date of the
publication, you can fill it in on
Woflram Alpha later
www.wolframalpha.com

38. 38
Step 4: What is the location?
Verification handbook
Location: “Where was the
content created?”
Try to discover the location the
content is posted.
www.google.nl

39. 39
.
Tools for Verifying Images:
Jeffrey’s Exif Viewer: An online tool that reveals the Exchangeable Image File (EXIF) information
of a digital photo
.
Foto Forensics: This website uses error level analysis (ELA) to indicate parts of an image that
may have been altered.
Fuskr: Add-on to find all the photos with the digital camera default file names
Google Search by Image: By uploading or entering an image’s URL, users can find content such
as related or similar images, websites and other pages using the specific image.
JPEGSnoop: A free Windows-only application that can detect whether an image has been edited.
RevEye: This Chrome plug-in will let you search not just Google’s image database, but also the
databases of TinEye, Yandex, Baidu and Bing.
TinEye: A reverse image search engine that connects images to their creator
YouTube Data Viewer: This shows a video’s exact upload date and time

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htt[://Tineye.com
TinEye
A reverse image search engine that
connects images to their creators by
allowing users to find out where an image
originated, how it is used, whether
modified versions exist and if there are
higher resolution copies.
Check Images with TinEye
Tool 1

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Pellentesque vel mauris quis nisl ornare rutrum in id risus.
Proin vehicula ut sem et tempus. Interdum et malesuada
fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus.
Data Driving
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam
tincidunt ante nec sem congue conva
86%
76%
Twitter Users
76%
Facebook Users
76%
Google Users
Check Images with TinEye
Factchecking

42. 42
Google Search by Image

43. 43
Tools for Verifying Identities
Person Finder: One of the most well-known open source databanks for individuals to post and search for the
status of people affected during disaster.
Pipl.com: Searches for an individual’s Internet footprint.
Rapportive: This Gmail plugin gives users a LinkedIn profile on their contacts, including social media
accounts, location, and employment.
Spokeo: A people search engine that can find individuals by name, email, phone or username.
Skypegrab: With a skype handle, one can track IP address and user location.
Storyful MultiSearch Extension: Simple and quick solution to search accounts associated with a specific
handle from one social platform to another.
WebMii: The tool searches for weblinks that match an individual’s name, or can identify unspecified
individuals by keyword.

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Tools for Verifying Identities
AnyWho: A free white pages directory with a reverse look-up function.
BotOrNot: It checks the activity of a Twitter account and gives it a score based on how likely the account is a
bot.
Email Checker: A tool to check whether an email address exists.
Facebook Graph Search: A social search engine that is integrated into Facebook. It provides a streamlined
method to locate individuals.
Facebook Graph Search Engine Search engine to track an individual and find hidden information about the
individuals shared on Facebook.
GeoSocial Footprint: A website where one can track the users’ location “footprint” created from GPS enabled
tweets, social check-ins
HRL Lookups: One can trace network connection data, and check whether the number is valid, whether the
number is active and which network the mobile is using.
Muck Rack: Among other services, it lists thousands of journalists on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Quora,
Google+, LinkedIn
Numberway: A free directory of international phone books.

45. 45
www.yourcompanyname.com
WebMii
Searches for weblinks that
match an individual’s name, or
can identify unspecified
individuals by keyword. It gives
a web visibility score which can
be used to identify fake profiles.
App for identifying persons
Tool 2

46. 46
Verifying Video
Tool 3

47. 47Tool 4
Crowd sourced factchecking

48. 48

49. 49
Social semantic journalism

50. 50
http://www.trustthesource.nl
What i’m working on
Trustthesource
Tool 5
• Tool that combines all other
tools
• An algorithm that gives you
Immediate results
• Fact-checking based on
linguistics

51. TrusttheSource
Thank you for your time!
Info@Trustthesource.nl - evertvanbolhuis@hotmail.com - p.prins@st.hanze.nl – Marinamf@usal.es