Fact-checking · 5/6

Images and video: check the caption too

Verify provenance, time and place without treating appearance as authentication.

About 15–20 minutes. The following cases are fictional.

Record your first judgment

A flood clip is captioned “our city today”. One viewer trusts its sharpness; another calls it AI because an edge looks odd.

My initial judgment, confidence and reasons

Understand the judgment process

Separate the footage from its caption. A genuine recording can depict another place or year. Look for uploaders, fuller versions, watermarks and landmarks, then earlier copies or other angles. The earliest located upload is not necessarily the original recording.

Reverse-image or keyframe searches can locate prior versions. No match does not establish novelty or synthesis. Metadata can be missing, changed or removed by platforms, so it cannot settle the claim alone.

Odd fingers, edges and compression are leads, not conclusive tests. Neither a single artifact nor a detector score proves generation. If unresolved, report unconfirmed time, place or provenance instead of equating uncertainty with forgery. This workbench does not upload or authenticate media.

Checks you can perform

Separate visible content from added claims.
Locate fuller or earlier versions and upload dates.
Cross-check landmarks, historical copies and independent records.
Record methods and unresolved identity, time and place.

Guided practice

You locate the same clip two years earlier. Does that establish there is no flooding in the city today?

My analysis and checking plan

Explore the explanation

No. It undermines this clip as present-day local evidence, not the separate claim about today’s conditions. Confirm that the earlier item is actually the same footage.

Apply it in a new context

A blurry frame appears to show six fingers and someone calls the whole clip synthetic. What else should you inspect?

My independent response

Compare after attempting

Find clearer originals and adjacent frames, considering overlap, motion and compression. Trace provenance and compare other records. A local anomaly cannot authenticate the entire clip.

Preserve a revision record

What changed your judgment? What still supports it? When will you review?

Media checks may remain inconclusive. This lesson teaches evidence recording, not automated image authentication.

Check whether you supplied inspectable evidence, a feasible next step and revision conditions. Revealing an answer is not mastery.

Source and scope

Verification Handbook — Verification of visual material

The source provides conceptual or methodological background. Cases, steps and exercises are authored here; they are not the original experiment or evidence of this course’s effectiveness.

I have completed this section; uncheck to undo

Completion is a personal record, not proof of mastery or certification.