Checking platforms have denied 244 false content since the beginning of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine until 4 pm this Friday (25). Of this total, 224 posts were videos or images taken out of context to incorrectly illustrate the war between the two countries, equivalent to 92% of the total classified content.
The data comes from a survey organized by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which included information from fact-checkers from 28 countries.
The platforms in India and Spain were the ones that published the most checks, with 33 checks each. The second and third place go to Georgia and Turkey, with 25 and 17 contents analyzed.
Brazil, in turn, is in fourth place, with 16 publications. In all, the spreadsheet has a total of 244 false contents. This does not mean that there are 244 different pieces of information, as the same content may have been verified by more than one platform.
Last Thursday (24), Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized the invasion of Ukraine. Since then, shocking images of bombs exploding, among other military maneuvers, have been shared by media outlets and users on social media. Several of the records being published on the networks, however, are not current and were not even made in Ukraine.
In Brazil, Lupa had identified nine fake content about the war between Russia and Ukraine until 4 pm this Friday, eight of which were videos and photos taken out of context.
Among the cases analyzed, two show a real conflict that took place in the Gaza Strip. In May 2021, Israel bombed the region after Hamas launched rockets into Jerusalem. The photographs taken by Mahmud Hams and Kahlil Hamra during this episode have recently been circulating as if they were from Ukraine.
Some of the videos verified by Lupa do not even show scenes of combat between two countries. Posted by the profile Choquei on Twitter, a recording shows lightning striking a power plant. Another record, shared by a user on Instagram, shows an explosion of containers with flammable and explosive materials in China in 2015.
In both cases, the videos were old and had nothing to do with Russia or Ukraine, as indicated by the captions shared with the images.
Game scenes were also used to illustrate the war started this week. Through a reverse search, it was possible to identify that some images were taken from the Arma 3 and War Thunder games. These fake content went viral on social media, being shared by about 78,000 people on Facebook alone.
These scenes, created by computer graphics, were not only circulated in Brazil, and were also denied by checkers in India, Bangladesh, Spain, the United Kingdom, Georgia, Mexico, Colombia and the United States.
Edited by MaurÃcio Moraes
