Sharing photos is an easy way to spread misinformation and disinformation. According to non-profit fact-checking website First Draft News, people are more likely to believe something they can see visually than simply reading text. Photos that are manipulated are also tough to debunk as compared to textual disinformation.
An example of a fake image claiming that COVID19 emerged in China because citizens are eating human babies flesh. AFPFactCheck has debunked it as false, clarifying that the photo is a piece of performance art staged by a Chinese artist 20 years ago. (Source: AFPFactCheck)
Thankfully, with some practice, you can learn how to debunk images easily in no time.
In some cases, even though the images themselves have not been manipulated, what they show can be taken out of context. But one way to debunk this is through reverse image search.
There are some examples of viral posts claiming that animals have reclaimed human habitation areas. For example, this Twitter user tweeted a photo that claims Americans are coming out to stand in solidarity against COVID19. But a simple reverse image search can show that the photo used is in the wrong context and the original photo is over four years old. All you have to do is to save the image and search it on a reverse image site like TinEye, here is how you do it:
Here is a more complicated example. A viral tweet about how the canals in Venice, Italy claimed that the water has become clearer and fishes are coming because the lack of activities during the COVID19 outbreak has significantly reduced pollution. While we would love for this to be true, unfortunately the images posted are not from Venice. It is in another Italian town called Burano, where there are already clear waters and animals thriving in the canals even before the outbreak began.
Eliot Higgins, founder and executive director of investigative journalism site Bellingcat, created this useful Twitter thread that documents how to debunk such misinformation with Google maps.