Verification Handbook for Disinformation and Media Manipulation

In parallel with the COVID-19 pandemic, we are suffering through an infodemic, a deluge of information and misinformation. It's critically important that we are able to filter the good stuff from the garbage and deliberately misleading that we see online. And that's true not just for pandemic-related material, but for political and scientific information, to name just two other important areas.

To help deal with this, the European Journalism Centre has published the Verification Handbook for Disinformation and Media Manipulation. You can read it online for free.

The latest edition of the Verification Handbook arrives at a critical moment. Today’s information environment is more chaotic and easier to manipulate than ever before. This book equips journalists with the knowledge to investigate social media accounts, bots, private messaging apps, information operations, deep fakes, as well as other forms of disinformation and media manipulation. The first resource of its kind, it builds on the first edition of the Verification Handbook and the Verification Handbook for Investigative Reporting.

This is the table of contents from the second section: Investigating Actors and Content.

 Investigating Actors & Content

1. Investigating Social Media Accounts

1a. Case Study: How investigating a set of Facebook accounts revealed a coordinated effort to spread propaganda in the Philippines

1b. Case Study: How we proved that the biggest Black Lives Matter page on Facebook was fake

2. Finding patient zero

3. Spotting bots, cyborgs and inauthentic activity

3a. Case study: Finding evidence of automated Twitter activity during the Hong Kong protests

4. Monitoring for fakes and information operations during breaking news

5. Verifying and questioning images

6. How to think about deepfakes and emerging manipulation technologies

I've only had a chance to skim through some of the chapters, but at a first glance it looks like an extremely valuable and useful resource. Here's a Twitter thread from Craig Silverman, Media Editor at BuzzFeed News, that touches on some of the highlights of the book.