For human rights NGOs, credibility can be lost in a moment if the evidence they are using for advocacy or in courts is later found to be false.
- Ella McPherson
The footage is shaky but the sounds of gunfire and “Allahu Akbar!” are unmistakable as the boy darts along the dusty road towards the burnt-out car. Puffs of smoke erupt around him. He falls to his knees. Has he been shot? It’s hard to tell, but a moment later he is up again, running for the shelter of the abandoned car. Yet it’s not over. He emerges holding the hand of an even younger girl dressed in pink. They run, hesitantly at first, then desperately. The fear on their faces is palpable.
This is the ‘Syrian Hero Boy’. The footage appeared on 10 November 2014 on YouTube and it quickly went viral as millions of viewers watched, astonished at the boy’s bravery and shocked at a world that could place children in such danger.
But further shock was to come. The film was fake. It was filmed in Malta on the set of Gladiator by Norwegian film-maker Lars Klevberg.
Klevberg’s intention was to spur debate about children and war. By pretending the film was real, he believed that “people would share it and react with hope.”
It also drew attention to an increasingly common scenario: fake footage appearing on social media. “By publishing a clip that could appear to be authentic, we hoped to take advantage of a tool that’s often used in war; make a video that claims to be real,” he said.
In our digitally enabled world, a legion of ‘civilian witnesses’ has sprung up: individuals “in the wrong place at the wrong time” who capture an event and then publish the scrap of footage or the incriminating photograph on social media. But amid the fog of propaganda, hoaxes and digital manipulation, how can we tell what’s real and what’s fake?
Cambridge researchers are developing an automated tool, ‘the Whistle’, to help verify the authenticity of digital evidence.
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Image: 'Syrian Hero Boy'
Credit: Lars Klevberg
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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