Fake News zu Nahostkonflikt auf Social Media

These pictures have been coming to us for weeks. Clips and photos that show real situations around the fights in Israel and Gaza. Spread on Facebook, Telegram, Instagram and TikTok. This video supposedly shows how Israel is bombing the Gaza Strip with fighter jets. Another clip shows a huge protest in the middle of Berlin. Allegedly by pro-Palestinian demonstrators, more than a million times liked and 20,000 times shared. We want to check both videos. After the terrorist attack by Hamas on civilians in Israel on October 7th, the Middle East conflict escalated again. Israel reacts with a ground offensive in Gaza. And the war is also raging on the Internet. Countless users post pictures and videos on social media. How can we trust these pictures? Galileo reporter Sidney goes in search of the truth. I would be very interested to know if this video is real. And I'll find out today. Teresa Lehmann is one who is familiar with it. She is a political educational representative for the Amadeo Antonio Foundation and deals with hate phenomena on social media apps like TikTok. These are pictures of war that are spread on social media. Do they belong there? We saw it in 2021 when the Middle East conflict escalated. It was also very present on TikTok. And also when Ukraine was attacked by Russia. We have to do it with a hybrid form of warfare. That is, the war is carried out on the one hand in the classical sense, but also on social media. Teresa has been following the postings on the Middle East conflict for weeks, sees suffering and destruction in the clips. According to her observation, one page is represented much more presently. There are already more videos that are directed against Israel. And they also argue very unilaterally. We are now in the middle of Gaza, we are now in the ground offensive. And what was before that is faded out. And also the whole story before that is faded out or very shortened and presented unilaterally. Allegedly an attack on Israel or a huge pro-Palestinian demo in Berlin. It is sometimes unclear whether such clips are real. Nevertheless, we often like or share them very quickly. One tries to get close to the emotions of people. So to scare them. This suggestion power of these strongly emotionalized images then also consolidates an opinion picture. This means that such a material is also used specifically in the field of disinformation to consolidate young people in the conviction that they are standing on the right side and will do the right thing if they spread this disinformation. What can we do specifically not to fall for false information? In principle, it takes a small journalistic one-to-one. But of course we also need fact checks and the work of critical journalists to verify such videos. We meet such experts who show us how we ourselves recognize fake news. In Berlin we visit the Korrektiv editorial office. Korrektiv is a non-profit investigative research center. Uschi Jonas heads the ten-headed fact-check team. Since 2017, they have uncovered more than 3,000 false posts. 30 of them about the current situation in the Middle East. We also show Uschi our pictures. Do you know these videos? Are they real? I actually know this video. We published a fact-check about it. As a reminder, this is supposed to show an air strike on Gaza. Okay, you can see a street here. You can see this building has a big poster on it. You could use all these details to find out where it was recorded. After a very long search, we came across a YouTube video that was published in 2022. If you look at the video again, you can see this fire on the roofs. It's not a rocket launch fire, it's football fans with Bengali fire in their hands. So it's obviously fake news. It's just football fans celebrating. Exactly, and that's how we disproved this video or how we determined that it's not a real scene in Gaza. And what about the allegedly huge pro-Palestinian demonstration in Berlin? Almost 15,000 people are said to have gathered in the middle of the city. Tell me, what do you notice about it? This is the world time clock. This is Saturn at Alexanderplatz. We know that. But what I definitely miss are the flags for Palestine. I don't see any there. And that would be the first thing that would make me dizzy. And if you look closely at this video, we have the date of the 20th of October. Think of it as current. But the video is available again. And here you can see the date 6.06.2020. That could be an indication that something is wrong. It's Black Lives Matter. Exactly, it was a Black Lives Matter demo. This video has 1 million views, has been shared 20,000 times. If I didn't know better, I would also believe that it's real. If you want to see fake videos, you should first take a close look. Some clips are from a completely different country or are already years old. Often we find similar or even the same recordings on other accounts. This is what professionals do when checking facts. They then publish their research on their website. But how we can do that ourselves, Uschi shows us with an example. There was a video here. It was supposed to show that Israel has supported a current attack in the Gaza Strip. I actually saw the video, just recently. Oh, wow. We just took a screenshot from this video. You can also do it very easily. Here, for example, with TinEye. Then it plays out the results and says, hey, where did I find that everywhere on the net? Here you can see relatively quickly, if you look at the date. 2021. Exactly, it's a media report in which it was used from 2021. That is, it's at least two years old. With tools like TinEye or Google Search, we can trace images from the net. This is how Uschi and the team check whether a video really shows what we believe. A brand new player, artificial intelligence. And what else is there, are more and more artificially generated images, i.e. content created by AI. I can show you a picture, which is a good example of this. We also found this picture on the net. What stands out? You just notice, you see this picture and it simply releases a strong emotion. It's like a father, he has five children with him. Behind it is a destroyed house. You just see suffering in this picture. And of course there is also authentic image material, authentic evidence that there is this suffering. But this picture is simply artificially generated. If you look closely, what you can really pay attention to, are teeth and fingers. For example, here with this child on the arm, you can see that there are only three teeth. Or here you don't see any teeth structure. Or with this boy, either you don't see any feet at all, or you have the feeling that there is a huge foot here and a small foot there. Things that may not be noticeable at first glance, but if you take a closer look at the second one ... Never, I would never have noticed. But a little bit here, also in the face, it looks a bit crumpled. Or the eyes of the girl, they also look strange, of course. But you have to go very close to that. Hey, thank you so much for letting us be there. You're welcome. Definitely great work you do. I definitely learned a lot today. Very good, I'm glad. Thank you, bye! Fake news will definitely remain a problem on social media. And it is all the more important to deal with such images critically in order not to give more fire to this difficult situation.