Ukraine Information War: How to spot fake news and misinformation online – Evening Standard

W

ar in Ukraine is unfolding in real time, both in person and online, as variants of the truth are being shared.

There has been a slew of misinformation from falsely credited images to stories of supposed war victories all adding to the confusion between truth and tall tales.

While Russia has introduced new laws punishing those deemed to discredit armed forces, the freedom of the net elsewhere has allowed for myths and facts to mix on social media.

Heres how to check who to trust and do your due diligence when consuming online content:

How can I help?

Information is being uploaded too fast for human moderators to handle, so while many posts go live sans warning, proceed with caution.

The virality of breaking news on the internet tempts immediacy in our reactions but it is vital to pause, read and check before clicking retweet.

Is social media being fact-checked?

Twitter and Meta have ordered content from Russia Today and Sputnik to be labelled as state-sponsored content on their platforms, including Instagram.

YouTube said it will block both news outlets, while Google has banned RT and Sputnik from their Play app store.

How do I check my sources?

Digging through threads on Twitter and Facebook to verify users can be time consuming.

Instead, you can make a list of trusted sources and use news tools like Google News and Apple News to help sift through information.

On the ground reporters and vetted professionals can be a reliable but be sure to check their credentials by a blue tick or their previous work.

Google search names and organisations while remaining wary of new and unverified accounts with only a few followers.

How do I spot fake images?

Visual media is often the first insight into new stories and the spread of old videos and images resurfacing as new content can cause more perplexity in times of crisis.

An image of an airstrike from the video game War Thunder, falsely attributed to the Ukraine crisis, was viewed more than 300,000 times in one tweet.

A zombie video of a 2015 chemical warehouse explosion in China has also resurfaced out of context multiple times, according to AFP Fact Check.

Spotting a fake image can be as easy as running a reverse image search.

Google Chrome and browser extension RevEye offer right-click options to reverse search images.

Search engines Yandex, TinEye and Bing allow users to search by URL or upload images to see if they have been previously published online.

Whats the difference between misinformation and disinformation?

Misinformation is the sharing of false or inaccurate information while disinformation is added with bad intent.

The deliberately deceptive nature of the latter can be important to identify anecdotal tales like the unverified Ukrainian war hero Ghost of Kyiv from Russian propaganda that is being used to justify war crimes.

Both should not be shared carelessly but one is more insidious.

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Ukraine Information War: How to spot fake news and misinformation online - Evening Standard