Open source information about human rights abuses can frequently be graphic and deeply disturbing. In Amnesty International’s Evidence Lab, responsibly dealing with videos containing violent and distressing imagery, and avoiding the risks of vicarious or secondary trauma is something we take very seriously. We talk about it frequently, check in with each other as a…
Tutorial on how to install and use Youtube-dl to download audiovisual content from Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and thousands of other supported sites Tools needed: Windows or MacOS, package manager software (Homebrew or chocolatey/choco), youtube-dl (software), ffmpeg (software) Skill Level: Intermediate Despite the immense value of open source content for documenting human rights abuses, this content…
Global protests are being snapchatted too Tutorial on using Snapchat and Snap Map to monitor, discover and preserve content related to developing crises Tools needed: Screen recording tool (free options provided in article), Snap Map for web browser, Snapchat account (optional), Google Chrome (optional) Skill Level: Basic How to: Use Snapchat to Monitor Breaking Events…
Our Digital Verification Corps – a global collaboration between Amnesty International and six universities – was named ‘International Collaboration of the Year’ at the Times Higher Education Awards in London on November 28th, along with the University of Essex’s Digital Verification Unit. The judges said they were “incredibly impressed with the nature of the partnership, how it…
The New York Times recently conducted a detailed investigation into the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons attack in Syria, and they presented their findings in the video below. Most importantly for researchers interested in open source investigations, Malachy Browne, who led the project, provided detailed insights into how they investigated the incident using open source and geospatial analysis.
Storyful recently released a podcast on the risks that come with prolonged and frequent exposure to graphic content. I consider this a crucial—and unfortunately still underreported—challenge in crisis human rights research. Even more reason to also highlight this important podcast on this site.
Reflections from Digital Verification Corps (DVC) volunteer Adebayo Okeowo The cure for fake stories is to simply counter it with the truth. But then what happens when individuals with questionable motives create false news based on inaccurate facts? This will require more than just a critical eye and a sharp mind. It will entail special…
Cross-posted with Lemming Cliff Amid the grey dust and twisted metal, the young girl discovered beneath the rubble of a destroyed building in Kafr Deryan, a small town 40km west of Aleppo, is barely visible. If you look closely enough, for a split second you can see her ponytail and hair tie before they disappear…
New data streams have revolutionized every industry. It’s no different for human rights. No different, also, is learning to understand how these work to leverage them for the greater good. That’s what Amnesty’s Alt-Click project is about. How do we take the great opportunities out there – micro tasking, social media streams, large databases –…
Editor’s note: As of December 2019, the below article was edited to address dead links. Previously published in New African Magazine . Also available in Spanish and French. In March 2014 a grainy cell phone video came across my desk that seemed to show a Nigerian soldier murdering an unarmed man in broad daylight. It took…
Photo: Screenshot of a video from the Syrian conflict after it has been removed by YouTube. Screenshot taken from YouTube. The most compelling evidence of a human rights violation captured on video can be lost if investigators do not save the video in question. YouTube videos are often removed, either by the uploader themself, or…
Photo: Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)-UN Chemical Weapons Team Arrives in Damascus. October 1, 2013. © UN Photo by Hend Abdel Ghany. Why is it sometimes important to extract the exact local upload time of a YouTube video? Besides being helpful to find the original video among a host of scraped videos,…