This article was published on July 8, 2014

With Citizen Evidence Lab, Amnesty International wants to help journalists authenticate YouTube videos


With Citizen Evidence Lab, Amnesty International wants to help journalists authenticate YouTube videos

YouTube may be used by many to share awful karaoke incidents and animals doing awesome things, but it can also be a valuable journalistic tool for anyone to broadcast to the world. The problem is, however, how can you know for sure whether a video that purports to support a particular story is authentic? When was it really filmed, and where?

With that in mind, Amnesty International has launched a new online tool that hopes to arm journos and human-rights advocates with the skills to sniff out the real from the fake user-generated videos. The Citizen Evidence Lab includes step-by-step guides and detailed checklists to follow as you try to verify what’s in front of you, covering who uploaded the video, when it was published, and the location of the shoot. It’s certainly a great accompaniment to the Verification Handbook.

Citizen Evidence Lab [via Nieman Journalism Lab]

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