4.4: SIFTing- UN Dance Protesting Nikki Haley (Discussion)

So let's take a look:

In this case we could just click the fact-check we see in the general search, assuming we either recognized Snopes or Al-Araby as a reputable source. If we don't recognize those sources or see relevant material, we click into Google News.

Our finding? The clip is miscaptioned. It's not from 2018, it's not about Trump or Nikki Haley or protest. It's an enjoyable but rather unremarkable clip of a 2013 event where a famous Palestinian singer was invited to sing at the United Nations.

False Frames

While there are videos and photos that are fake or manipulated online, a far more common tactic is to take real media and miscaption it. The example above is pretty blatant. But often it is more subtle — and more dangerous.

Take for example this infamous tweet that was posted after the London Bridge bombing.

The picture is real, but the way the poster would like you to see it is not. The frame here is that a woman wearing a hijab cares so little about victims of Islamic extremist violence that she won't even look up from her phone.

The image pinged around the web with that story, and while this version has blurred out the face, the face was not blurred in the original. People believed this specific woman was a monster.

But was that the frame through which they should have viewed it? After the photo and false frame had circulated through the web the real story emerged. The poster had chosen one of two photos, with the second photo showing that she was clearly in shock:

REX/Shutterstock. Used under fair use.

When news outlets contacted the photographer, he said the woman was like many people that day walking past — she would have just come through a much more devastating scene, and been in shock, and the rescuing teams did not want assistance, they wanted space to do their jobs. Many people were on their phones as they tried to reach relatives. The photo the poster didn't choose clearly shows the trauma and concern.

Reuters/Toby Melville. Used under fair use provision.

Because of the falsely framed photo the woman was viciously attacked by others on social media. When contacted by reporters, she mentioned she was calling her family to tell them she was OK:

She said her feelings at the time were of sadness, fear and concern, and added that she had talked to other witnesses to try to find out what was happening and see if she could offer help. She then called her family and helped a woman get to Waterloo station.

Sharpening the Event

Some frames aren't wholly false, but are sharpened to the point where they are deceptive. An example of this sort of sharpening was the 2019 Covington student altercation with a Native American drummer in Washington D.C.

In this case, initial footage was shared on Twitter and through other outlets that seemed to show Catholic high school students wearing Make America Great Again hats surrounding a Native elder during a drumming ceremony to mock him.

The characterization was not completely incorrect. But the reaction to the video was heavily influenced by the starting point of the edit. While the framing of the video initially made it seem as if the students surrounded the drummer to mock him, later videos that emerged showed that the drummer had in fact approached the students.

Discussing these things can be difficult, because even after the frame is corrected, the original intensity of feeling still remains. It's particularly hard in this case, because in the full video there are still questions to be asked about appropriate conduct and cultural respect.

But one's emotional reaction to students who actively surround an older man as a mob and block his exit in order to mock his culture is different than one's reaction to watching students respond inappropriately to an older man that approaches them in what they feel is a confusing manner.

In this case both sides lost. Had the longer video been released first, a productive discussion might have been possible. Instead, the initial video fired one group of people into a frenzy, while the revelations of subsequent videos caused the other side to dismiss the behavior entirely.

We'll come back to this point later, when we talk about the "T" in SIFT. But for now remember that even if photos and videos are "real" it's important to check trusted sources to make sure you have the whole story. If it turns out you were reacting to something manipulated or falsely framed, consider that your initial reaction was wrong, and adjust accordingly.

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