You will become one of our editorial team, digging into and verifying User Generated Content (UGC) out of a closed society (Iran), verifying or rejecting real videos, photos and social media posts.
Covering stories out of Iran, when your reporters are not allowed inside Iran, is a challenge – particularly with User Generated Content (UGC). VOA has three editorial units (VOA Persian, the Extremism Watch Desk, the VOA News Center) covering and vetting UGC video out of Iran – for situations such mass protests following the U.S. attack on an Iranian general and the outbreak of COVID-19 in Iran. VOA created a vetting team made up of Region Experts, Technical Experts and Editorial Experts who apply situational and technical awareness to Iranian UGC content. The session: Two senior members of the combined team will conduct a workshop-like panel. They will summarize and take questions about the entire procedure. The core of the session, however, will focus on a series of individual videos the team found and vetted, particularly using the OSINT tools mentioned above (and others). The team will demonstrate its vetting of several photos and videos and then the team will break participants up into vetting teams (similar to our protocol) and those teams will vet UGC, gleaning information from sources we provide, and through OSINT – and then present their results for discussion.
Suggested Speaker(s)
- Hasib Danish Alikozai
Managing Editor, Voice of America Extremism Watch Desk - Sirwan Kajjo
International Broadcaster, Voice of America, Extremism Watch Desk