WITNESS Media Lab | Perpetrator Video Archives - Page 4 of 6

11 Apr Methodology

| WITNESS METHODOLOGY This case study discusses the ethical challenges mentioned above, and sets out the methodology used to build a process for a story of this type, defined by WITNESS for the purposes of this report as a Model 1 investigation – the investigation of a

11 Apr Outcome

| WITNESS OUTCOME Storyful identified the women seen in some of the videos, and by watching the story develop over time, showed that those women were from Sweida and identified sources on the ground who could provide corroborating information. As a result of Storyful’s reporting, a number

11 Apr Purpose

| WITNESS PURPOSE Storyful’s interest in the story was journalistic: what could we find out about the victims, their families, or their captors through an analysis of open source material, in order to tell their stories? The investigation posed a unique question: how could we link the

11 Apr Introduction

| WITNESS INTRODUCTION Fighters with Islamic State (IS) launched a surprise attack on the Syrian city of Sweida and nearby villages on July 25, 2018, killing at least 240 people and injuring more than 170. During the attack, IS fighters kidnapped 30 people from towns in eastern

11 Apr Ethical use of perpetrator content

| WITNESS ETHICAL USE OF PERPETRATOR CONTENT Collecting and analysing perpetrator content raises several ethical concerns, both in terms of the potential impact on journalists or investigators, and because of concerns relating to the use and dissemination of such material and the risks to the safety and

11 Apr Archiving content and associated metadata

| WITNESS ARCHIVING CONTENT AND ASSOCIATED METADATA Consideration should be given to the nature of the content. It may need to be hosted offline, ideally backed up to multiple drives, or on private servers, as hosting companies may take issue with such content. However, encrypted online storage

11 Apr Aggregation of Sensitive Data & Ethical Use

| WITNESS AGGREGATION OF SENSITIVE DATA & ETHICAL USE Verified content should be archived systematically. Download everything. Due to the problematic nature of perpetrator content, videos should be downloaded immediately, since they may be removed by platforms, or an uploader’s account may be suspended for breach of

11 Apr Audience Engagement

| WITNESS AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT The reach of a given video cannot be exhaustively tracked. Views, interactions, etc, will rarely give an accurate picture in the case of perpetrator video, which is often copied, shared and reshared multiple times. Due to the nature of perpetrator content, platforms often

11 Apr Location

| WITNESS LOCATION Verifying the location of a video depends on a careful assessment of unique identifiers: geographic, cultural, clothing, language used, and so on. Each of these can provide contextual clues to the location or corroborating information. Search for useful information (street signs, car license plates,

11 Apr Source

| WITNESS SOURCE If the answers to the above questions are yes, this may be the earliest source. Are there other ways to find out more about the uploader and people seen in the video? Review the uploader’s social profile and check for a presence on other