Trustify

As we work with social sources, it’s important to understand the most prevalent types of fake content shared via social networks.

Wrong time / wrong place
The most prevalent kind of deceptive content is old images or videos that have been taken out of context and reposted with statements about a recent news event. Using the methods listed below, it is usually easy to refute this content, which is frequently unintentionally posted on social networks.

• For example —> Aleksandr Kristen, a Latvian MP from the nationalist VL/TBLNNK party opposed to resettlement of predominantly Middle East and African refugees within EU, posted a tweet on June 20, 2016, mocking the notion that highly-skilled workers would be among the arrivals. To illustrate his point, Kristen’s chose a picture of dark-skinned protesters vandalising a car.In reality, the picture had nothing to do with the
thousands of refugees arriving in Europe that summer: it was taken in Baltimore, USA, after a local man died in police custody.
(http://ledition.cnn.com/2015/04/272 us/baltimore-unrest/)

Manipulated content
“Digitally altered material created with Photoshop and other picture or video editing software is less frequent than “wrong time/wrong place” stuff. It can be harder to spot this content than “wrong time/wrong place” because it was probably shared with the goal to mislead.

Staged content
Since it takes the most effort to create, staged content is the least prevalent kind of fake content. These bogus materials, which fall into several categories, were produced and posted with the intention of misleading people.
Staged videos

• this type of content can look and feel very authentic.

Fake news sites
Web address err.ee is operated by the Estonian national broadcaster (rus.err.ee is its Russian affiliate). However, there is a website eer.ru, which can and does lead to confusion among average users because they appear to be visually identical to each other, (and many more like them) for instance when looking at news websites. Run by the NPO’s “International Institute Of The Problems Of Sustainable Development”, it describes itself as an information agency specializing in ”Foreign Trade Relations”. As described in the self description account formulated by Spravkaforme.ru, the corporation embodies as an online media with five news websites, number of over a million unique visitors per month, and ‘editors’ work hand in hand with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It hires freelance writers and pays them on a per article with a set number of clicks basis.

Local viral content

In recent years, the phenomenon of local viral content has emerged as fake content websites postura stories about places, such as terrorist attacks or fights of celebrities. Unofortunately, most of these reports remain poorly sourced, but from time to time, local outlets come across some allegations and decide to write a preposterous story around them.

• for example : a bleak video of a youngster lamenting Latvia as a failed state quickly gained popularity and went viral on Latvian Facebook pseudone-ws Sites in Dec, 2016. Within a week it was viewed 155,000 times on YouTube alone.
  The video itself was a copycat of similar American story “Dear future generations: sorry” which has been watched almost 5.7 million times at the time of writing. A simple YouTube search revealed the author to be a wannabe YouTuber whose videos usually get around 5,000 views. However, the video was passed as a genuine and popular opinion piece in the Latvian social networks and pseudonews sites.