Tag Archives: social media tools

Tool of the week: Error Level Analysis

What is it? A free tool to allow you to test whether or not an image has been digitally manipulated in programmes such as Adobe Photoshop. Paste the URL of a photo and Error Level Analysis will return results in an instant. The tool tests how many times an image has been manipulated and re-saved.

How is it of use to journalists? Journalists frequently have to verify images and work out whether they have been manipulated. It may be to test whether an image from a press release has been altered, or from social media sources using Twitter and Facebook.

Take the case of a journalist’s quest to find the man behind the world’s most expensive everything. Stewart Campbell, the deputy editor of Motor Boat and Yachting, set out to prove that a press release claiming the launch of a £3 billion golden superyacht was a fake. Campbell’s keen eye led him to the original photo, which he could prove had been doctored. Error Level Analysis would have demonstrated the level of digital manipulation, which you can see by clicking here.

The Error Level Analysis site clearly explains how the tool works – and comes with a word of warning about interpreting the results:

It works by resaving an image at a known quality, and comparing that to the original image. As a jpeg image is resaved over and over again, its image quality decreases. When we resave an image and compare it to the original, we can guess just how many times the image has been resaved. If an image has not been manipulated, all parts of the image should have been saved an equal amount of times. If parts of the image are from different source files, they may have been saved a number of different times, and thus they will stand out as a different colour in the ELA test.

It is worth noting that edges and areas red in colour are often depicted as brighter in the ELA tests. This due to the way the photos are saved by various programs. It is not proof that image was manipulated.

If you are unsure how to interpret the results, please do not claim the results of this tool as proof of anything.

Why news sites should consider adding the LinkedIn share button

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TechCrunch has revealed LinkedIn is now sending the site more referral traffic than Twitter.

Much of the traffic appears to be down to referrals from LinkedIn Today, a collection of articles shared by your connections – including via Twitter – but a quick look at the number of clicks a LinkedIn share button is acquiring suggests it is well worth adding.

TechCrunch’s post goes on to reveal this amazing fact:

The biggest stat of all is that a year ago, traffic coming from LinkedIn was 1/50th what it is today on a monthly basis.

So what changed? As far as we can tell, this is all about LinkedIn Today, the social news product the service launched back in March. It was around that time that was saw the first big bump in terms of traffic coming from LinkedIn. In March, it roughly doubled from February. Then April was pretty flat — it was still much higher than previously, but not growing. Then in May, traffic went up 5x. And in June, it more than doubled from that. The growth has been astounding.

Of course what’s perhaps most interesting about that is that LinkedIn Today is powered by Twitter. Twitter shared links determine what shows up on LinkedIn Today, but the traffic does not go back through Twitter.

Even more surprising is that the biggest traffic driver to TechCrunch is Facebook.

The truth is that if this were October of last year, you would have been right in thinking that Twitter was our top referrer in terms of social websites. But since that time, Facebook has far surpassed Twitter in terms of traffic coming our way each month. In fact, Facebook.com is now sends nearly double the traffic that Twitter.com does. This is probably due to the fact that last November, we added Elin, our excellent community manager, who curates and engages with people from our feed on Facebook. I also suspect it has to do with the rise of the like button. Ever since it was released last year, Facebook has been steadily referring more readers our way.

Speaking on today’s Journalism.co.uk #jpod on how journalists can best use Facebook pages Jack Riley, head of digital audience and content development at the Independent, explains how the Independent has seen an impressive growth in traffic to its news site via Facebook and how social referrals have overtaken traffic generated by search.

Riley states:

Just as we saw with the Google wave of the digital media revolution when everyone optimised their sites for search and SEO became a huge industry in its own right, now everyone is having to optimise their sites for social.

In the podcast Riley explains that this means adding open graph tags to articles so they are optimised for Facebook sharing.

But if your next step in social is adding LinkedIn share, here is how to add the button by copying and pasting a simple line of code.

TechCrunch’s post on its social traffic is well worth reading and is at this link.

@more4news challenges government on Twitter

CNN’s iReport attracts nearly 4,000 submissions on Iranian elections

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The role of amateurs, citizen journalists and non-professional media in the coverage of the Iranian elections and subsequent protests has been significant, both in its provision of material and insight to traditional news organisations, who have had their reporting restricted; and in its use of social media tools.

CNN’s citizen journalism site, iReport, has received 3,866 submissions on Iran since coverage of the elections began, with 1,600 from last Saturday and Sunday alone, according to a press release.

Of these, 131 have been used on air or online by CNN, after producers have carried out verification checks.

It is apparent that the reason for this astonishing increase in iReports is because of the strong views felt towards this specific case. Likewise during the election of Barack Obama CNN also saw an increase in iReports.

Thomson Reuters gets social with Gordon Brown

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Thomson Reuters went all out this morning in its coverage of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s speech at the company’s London office.

First off the organisation’s own coverage: the Newsmaker event was twittered by Reuters journalist Mark Jones, whose updates were fed into a special microsite.

There was also video of the PM’s announcement originally livestreamed on Reuters’ website – including a handy dropdown menu that lets you skip through the clip to different key moments.

A full transcript and text article of the speech have also been published on the site.

But in addition to Reuters’ own reporting on the event was live footage streamed using mobile phones and hosting service Qik by social media bloggers Documentally and Sizemore.

“With Gordon Brown due to start talking on the present economic crisis what can two beardy blokes with a few laptops and small cameras possible hope to add?

“Well nothing directly on what is about to be said. I have as much interest in current politics as I did in marketing movies. I’m here with Christian [Documentally] to start conversations around the NewsMaker event that are currently not part of Reuter’s remit,” wrote Mike Atherton aka Sizemore in a blog post.

Below is Documentally’s mobile video of the Newsmaker:

The pair also used social media tools such as online site Phreadz, which builds multimedia forums around content submitted by users, to generate discussion around Brown’s speech.

“I sincerely hope that following today the idea of getting these events discussed on social media platforms such as Twitter, Seesmic and Phreadz becomes a natural part of the news media’s roadmap,” added Atherton.