Thread by @lauragrb

You can AND SHOULD investigate anything - even #Evergreen 🚢 ship memes

Remember - anything that carries information can carry disinformation @firstdraftnews

Let’s look at some practical tips and tools that can help you do this #OSINT ⬇

First a definition!

Ⓜ️⍷ℳe - an idea or behavior that spreads person-to-person by propagating rapidly, & changing over time (Dawkins, 1976)

It can be a song, a video, a dance trend, a parody website and it is only limited by people’s creativity + ability to remix/create

Memes and images are incredibly powerful ways of conveying disinformation and spreading it quickly.
➡️They are self-contained stories
➡️They can be really emotional
➡️They’re easy to forward because image files tend to be smaller
➡️They’re easy and cheap to make

Funny images/memes use the power of heuristics to make you laugh 😆 - heuristics are the mental shortcuts we use to make sense of the world

To find the joke or meme funny you need to understand the underlying message. Laughing at it reinforces that - whether it’s correct or not

For example - this meme uses an image of the Evergreen to express an opinion on how the 🇨🇦 gov is doing with its vaccine roll-out.

Whether you find it funny or not will depend on what you know about the programme and your existing opinions of the Canadian government etc.

Because memes are easy and very cheap to make, they can also be replicated in different languages 🗣and across cultures 🌎🌍🌏.

You can reverse image search a meme to find other similar images on the Internet like it. ⬇️

You can use the plugin CrowdTangle Link Checker to get a sense of spread across social media platforms.

For example - this meme makes a parallel between the Evergreen and our mental health, when you click on the Link Checker it shows you where its being shared.

Google trends is a very powerful tool that can help you figure out people’s interests from all over the world by analysing their search patterns.

You can compare the frequency with which people in
🇫🇷 v 🇲🇽 typed the word Evergreen into their web browser in the last 7 days.

Need more evidence of the power of memes?

If you scroll down to the related queries section, you can also see the most common questions or queries people have related to your chosen keyword. In the case of Mexico, the 3rd most searched words are “Evergreen memes”.

Last trick - remember that memes can be anything: even websites.

For example - istheshipstillstuck.com - became a source of screenshots and jokes online as it tracked the progress on getting the Evergreen ship unstuck.

But what can we find out about it? 🤔

You can use whois.com to look at the registration data behind websites.

In this case, a quick look shows that the website was registered on the 25th of March - when someone jumped on the opportunity to create a website meme.

whois.domaintools.com/istheshipstill…

For these and more tricks - join @firstdraftnews Vaccine Insights flexible learning course.

Next session is TODAY at 1pm UK time with me - I will teach you how to verify sources online.

Sign up here ⬇️
firstdraftnews.org/vaccine-insigh…