Fighting Russia’s disinformation invasion | Financial Times

While Ukraine defends itself against a Russian invasion on the ground, a battle to protect the truth is raging online.

The open-source intelligence community is on alert for fake news promoted by Russia, analysing videos that are being used to make Ukraine look the aggressor and persuade the Russian public the cause is just.

The community suffered a setback hours before the full-scale invasion, with Twitter mistakenly suspending the accounts of open-source intelligence reporters. Twitter said a dozen had been flagged as containing manipulated or misleading media, but added it was “expeditiously reviewing these actions” and had reinstated many of the affected accounts.

Bellingcat, the collective of open source and social media researchers, investigators and citizen journalists, is acting as a clearing house for videos and disinformation found by the community, putting its own stamp of approval on accurate sourcing and compiling a database of dubious footage from the front lines.

Eliot Higgins, executive director of the Netherlands-based organisation, said on Thursday that the community was much better prepared compared to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, while Russian misinformation attempts remained unsophisticated.

Just looking at the metadata in files can show how footage has been doctored, wrong dates have been claimed and locations altered, he told a US Foreign Press Association webinar. The metadata means fake videos come with “a blueprint for how they had made the fake”.

Simple observation can also expose fake news. For example, this video blogger has been fooled that a Ukrainian IED attack has killed three civilians in a car. Researchers noted the scene had been staged, with bullet holes visible rather than ones caused by shrapnel, and the corpses showing signs of being previously autopsied, meaning they had probably been supplied by a local mortuary.

Higgins said increased access to satellite imagery, combined with geolocation data, meant it was taking less time to debunk fake footage, the truth being discovered in as little as an hour now.

Another organisation trying to expose what’s real is Dozhd. Check out Danny Leigh’s review of F@ck This Joba documentary on the independent Russian TV channel that has consistently given a voice to Ukrainians.

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