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 channels. Is their publicly available information consistent with the video? Where does the person live? Are they travelling? Is it plausible that they would be at the scene of this incident? Can they be contacted easily? Can they provide an original, raw version of the video?
Use open source tools to monitor their presence online:
- Foller.me – Identify a Twitter user’s friends/associates.
- Graph.tips – Search an individual’s Facebook interactions based on their username.
- Inteltechniques.com – Also for Facebook. See the events a profile has RSVP’d to, places they recommend, places checked into, etc.
In the case of perpetrator video in particular, where an uploader may not want to be identified, what can you learn from the video itself about the uploader or other people seen in the video?
Search for more content that shows the same incident, as it will give a wider perspective. This is central to verifying the source, date and location of the video.
For example, while investigating the suspected chemical attack on the Syrian city of Douma in April 2018, Storyful used multiple videos and photos from the incident to compare and crosscheck the scenes and the information provided to get clearer perspective on the attack, the victims and the perpetrators.
The following independent sources shared videos from the site:
Look at military uniforms, weapons, vehicles or munitions seen in the footage to assess the people seen in the video. Use open source information, such as this site on weapon types used in the Syrian conflict. However, information on social media, posted by locals or members of the military, should also be sourced to get up-to-date information from the locality.
If you trace the earliest version of a video back to an archiving site or a closed platform, what can this tell you? Can you find the original post, can you identify the account that uploaded it? Is there an observable spike in conversation, or was the video apparently shared spontaneously by a number of people at around the same time? This may indicate a coordinated campaign.