Free Tools to Fight Fake News: Verification for News and Comms
About the course:
Fake news is a growing problem across the media industry, with both news publishers and comms teams falling prey to mis- and disinformation. In this course, investigative journalist and fake news expert Ahmed Elsheikh introduces the digital tools you need to help you identify and combat disinformation.
The course sets out a full suite of free online verification tools for journalists and comms professionals who need to verify sources, substantiate information and establish the facts of news reports, emails, photographs, video or social media posts in the course of their work. The course will provide insights into how information, images and videos can be manipulated and provide a suite of apps, resources and processes to help you establish what’s really going on.
Particularly in light of recent events, verifying claims or reports has never been more important.
This is a practical workshop on Zoom, where trainees will engage in projects and receive feedback. Each trainee will need to have access to both computer and smart phone during the course.
Main topics:
- Free online verification tools.
- Verification on the go – using smart phone for verification.
- Reach original sources of photos and videos.
- Use Twitter and Facebook for newsgathering.
- Validate Locations of videos and news.
By the end of the course, trainees will be able to:
- Spot and validate doctored pictures.
- Verify manipulated videos.
- Reach and view accurate geographic locations via the internet.
- Filter social media update when covering breaking news.
About the Trainer, Ahmed Elsheikh:
Ahmed is a Digital Media Consultant at Mediamise Consultancies (www.mediamise.co.uk) and is Vice Chair of the Black Members Council of the NUJ. A former Senior Broadcast Journalist at the BBC, he provides training courses to BBC Media Action, Thompson Foundation and other international organisations. He holds a Master’s Degree on Social Media from The University of Westminster in London.