This resource page features course content from the Knight Center for Journalism in the America's massive open online course (MOOC) titled "Navigating Misinformation: How to identify and verify what you see on the web." The four-week course took place from March 25 to April 21, 2019. We are now making most of the content free and available to students who took the course and anyone else who is interested in learning how to verify online content and responsible reporting in an age of disinformation.
The course, which was supported by the Knight Foundation, was taught by Claire Wardle and her assistant Aimee Rinehart. They created and curated the content for the course, which includes video classes, readings, exercises, and more.
The course materials are broken up into three modules:
As you review this resource page, we encourage you to watch the videos, review the readings, and complete the exercises as time allows. The course materials build off each other, but the videos and readings also act as standalone resources that you can return to over time.
We hope you enjoy the materials. If you have any questions, please contact us at journalismcourses@austin.utexas.edu.
Claire Wardle leads the strategic direction and research for First Draft and is the co-founder of one of First Draft’s founding partners, Eyewitness Media Hub. She is also currently a TED fellow. Before First Draft, she was the research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She was also head of social media for the United Nations Refugee Agency and Director of News Services for Storyful. She is one of the world’s experts on user-generated content, and has led substantial research projects—with an emphasis on qualitative research methodologies—investigating how UGC is handled by news organizations. She was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Information and Entertainment. She holds a PhD in Communications from the University of Pennsylvania.
Aimee Rinehart directs partnerships and development for First Draft, where she has worked since 2016. She managed Comprova, the Brazilian election project in 2018, which was the first journalism organization to have API access to WhatsApp. She started working online in 1996 and was a digital originator at The New York Times. She was an editor at the Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels and upon her return to New York, worked in the communications departments at the American Civil Liberties Union, the Overseas Press Club of America and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She graduated from Indiana University School of Journalism and has an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers-Newark University.
Introduction
Overall Resource for the Course
This module will cover:
Video Classes
1. Discovery: finding problematic content online
2. How to use TweetDeck for discovery
3. A deep dive into CrowdTangle for discovery
Readings
1. How to begin to monitor social media for misinformation [First Draft]
2. Monitoring social media for misinformation, part two [First Draft]
3. Could the map make Snapchat a useful newsgathering tool? [First Draft]
3. Reporting on a new age of digital astroturfing [First Draft]
This module will cover:
Video Classes
1. Intro to verification as process
2. The challenge of dealing with scrapes
3. Intro to reverse image search
4. First Draft checklists
5. How to find a post's unique identification code
6. Metadata explained & why you can't always trust location metadata
7. How to research digital footprints
8. Learning date and time stamps
Readings
1. How should I contact a social source? [Approaching Social Sources, Chapter 1]
2. Verification fundamentals: Rules to live by [Verification Handbook, Chapter 2]
3. Verifying user-generated content [Verification Handbook, Chapter 3]
Optional Resources
1. Verifying images [Verification Handbook, Chapter 4]
2. Verifying video [Verification Handbook, Chapter 5]
3. Do I have to get permission before I can use eyewitness media? [Approaching Social Sources, Chapter 3]
4. How should I contact eyewitnesses when I need to gain permission to use their media? [Approaching Social Sources, Chapter 4]
This module will cover:
Video Classes
1. Using Wolfram Alpha
2. A quick introduction to shadow analysis
3. Understanding geo-location
4. Advanced Google maps tricks
5. Google Earth Pro basics
Readings
1. How to get started in online investigations with open-source information [First Draft]
2. The Times uses forensic mapping to verify a Syrian chemical attack [The New York Times]
3. Google Maps on Steroids [Medium]
Exercises
Try your hand at these verification interactive exercises: