Every week, we provide interesting links from around the web that discuss issues regarding the verification processes of content from social media. Here is our list for this week.

 

 

Will FB Newswire Make the Internet more Trustworthy?

Josh Constine (@joshconstine), technology journalist at TechCrunch, outlines in a recent contribution how Storyful’s technology and approach to verification could stop fake news from spreading on Facebook. This is of particular interest considering the recently announced partnership of Facebook with Storyful to create what they label FB Newswire, powered by Storyful (see also our Verify This Week 15/2014). According to Constine, “…putting Storyful’s news verification process in the spotlight could make the Internet more trustworthy.”

Sources: TechCrunch and Facebook

 

Fact or Fake?

Here’s another one dealing with the issue of “fact or fake”, but in a non-news context. The Wall Street Journal asks its website users whether they can identify counterfeit goods, for example as they are sold on e-commerce platforms. You can check whether you can spot “the real thing” here. (I only managed to get 1 out of 5 right, by the way!)

Source: Wall Street Journal Online

 

Urban Myths

Something we have not yet portrayed seems to be Snopes. Time to do so now! Snopes describes itself as “…the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.” Anyone can go to Snopes and check whether urban myths and news stories are believed to be real or fake. Users can do searches on Snopes, and the engine then provides results featuring that search term, plus assessments and evaluations (“true” or “false” or “mixture”) of respective claims and stories.

Source: Snopes

 

Highlight Selection of #ijf14

April 30th until May 4th saw the eigth edition of the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy. A number of sessions alo dealt with verification. There are a number of highlight collections worth checking out, one of them a curation of investigative highlights from the Global Investigative Journalism Network.

Sources: Global Investigative Journalism Network and International Journalism Festival