Thread by @brechtcastel

Footage of violence spreads like wildfire.🔥🔞

Often it’s used to blame a group of people: Ukrainian refugees in this case.

How to investigate such videos? I have 4⃣ easy steps for you. 🧵👇 1/...

#OSINT 🔎
#Verification 🎥
#GeoLocation 🌍
#HowToOSINT 🧐

We see a brawl in broad daylight on a public road. There are heavy blows, and when two cars with perpetrators drive off, someone is left lying on the ground, apparently unconscious.

It would be 'Ukrainians' in 'Austria'. 2/...

🔎1⃣ Find location

In the video, we see a flag of the United Kingdom 🇬🇧, but the images are usually located in the Austrian capital Vienna 🇦🇹.

We also see a statue of a horse on top of a building 🟥. 3/...

We googled 'horse on building Vienna'.

According to one of the search results, we would see the State Opera in Vienna. 4/...

If we walk around the area in Google Streetview (left) we find the location where the video (right) was shot.

The incident took place on the Kärtner Ring 🟪 in front of the Bristol Hotel in Vienna.

1⃣✅ 5/...

🔎2⃣ Find local news reports

We are looking for news 🟥 in which the street name Kärtner Ring 🟪 appears.

This leads us to two articles in the Austrian media 🟩. 6/...

The Austrian newspaper Kurier headlined on 27 May 'Two wounded in brutal brawl in front of luxury hotel in Vienna'.

According to the newspaper, the video dates from 25 May around noon. The two victims are said to be taxi drivers. 7/...

kurier.at/chronik/wien/z…

Heute published a reconstruction on 28 May based on statements from the police and eyewitnesses.

Before the video started, there was already a dispute between two taxi drivers and the men in a black BMW X5 and Toyota Land Cruiser.

2⃣✅8/...
heute.at/s/darum-schlug…

🔎3⃣ Find official statements

With all this info 👆 you can easily find what Austrian police is saying about this case. 9/...

https://twitter.com/LPDWien/status/1531210346207363074

The Vienna police reported on Twitter that 'according to a witness, during the argument a taxi driver opened the passenger door of the Ukrainian vehicle and tried to attack a person with a bat'.

The Viennese police mentions 'Ukrainian suspects'.

3⃣✅10/...

This is optional, but of course you can start digging yourself.

The fact that Ukrainians are suspected has to do, among other things, with the number plate visible in the video. We read AE 00 12 MT on the number plate. 11/...

According to a list on Wikipedia, AE is the region code of Dnipropetrovsk.

So the car was registered in that region in central Ukraine. 12/...

We show the footage to a car expert who states that the car in the video is a BMW X5, specifically the type G05.

We googled the number plate between "".

A Ukrainian site effectively links this number plate to a 2019 BMW X5 🟥, the model we see in the video. 13/

This is how we also find the car's chassis number 🟩👆.

(New #OSINT kid on the block @osint030 helped with this analysis 🙏)

That chassis number tells us that the car was sold in Ukraine on 11 October 2021 and re-registered in the name of a new owner on 31 December 2021. 14/..

@osint030 We can also find out the policy number of the car insurance (207553352) and contact details of the insurance company involved.

🚨The police can use this information: they can contact the insurance company and find out who owns the car. 15/...

@osint030 Someone also shared the chassis number on Twitter, after which someone tagged the Vienna police. 🐦

They respond that 'the investigation is ongoing'. So the Vienna police seem to be aware of this line of enquiry. 16/...

@osint030 🔎4⃣ More than meets the eye

As you can see 👆, we can learn a lot from a video, but be very aware that a short video does not show the whole truth. ⚠️17/...

@osint030 Vienna police: 'During the argument a taxi driver opened the passenger door of the Ukrainian vehicle and tried to attack a person with a baton'.

We have no visual proof of this, but police is investigating.

How the fight started is unclear. 18/...

@osint030 Not only is the beginning of the incident not visible in the viral video, the end is also missing.

We find a longer version of the video in which we see bystanders coming to the aid of the man on the ground (left and centre) and the person who filmed getting out of his car (R).

@osint030 The short viral version does not show these human reactions 🆘 and abruptly ends with the unconscious body on the pavement. 20/...

@osint030 4⃣✅ It's important to be aware of the limitations of #OSINT investigations.

We are not police.

We try to get as close to the truth as possible, but if there is no footage it's just speculation. 21/...

@osint030 ❗️Interesting and important question: How did the images spread?

@Ex_Trac researchers found out how the incident spread. In this timeline you can see how the spread on social media happened in the first week after the violent incident. 22/...

@osint030 @Ex_Trac Even before the first images surfaced online, Austrian politician Dominik Nepp, leader of the FPÖ, shared an e-mail he received about it on Twitter, referring to the 'Ukrainian number plate'. 23/...

@osint030 @Ex_Trac A day later, a previously inactive Twitter account shares the video.

The video starts circulating on social media like Twitter and Facebook and is also picked up by the tabloid OE24.

Nepp shares the video, published by OE24, with the message "Out of our country!". 24/...

@osint030 @Ex_Trac Nepp's tweet is then amplified by pro-Kremlin channels on Telegram. 📢

On 31 May, the Russian state broadcaster RT reported on the incident. 25/...

@osint030 @Ex_Trac CONCLUSION: We see an incident in Vienna on 25 May 2022.

Those involved, according to the Vienna police, are Ukrainians and local taxi drivers.

That a man was attacked 'without provocation', as stated in the video's caption, cannot be concluded from the available footage. 26/.

@osint030 @Ex_Trac What have we learned? 👩‍🏫

1) Location > local reports > some context, but stay careful 🔎🔎
2) A numberplate can be a very rich source. 🚗
3) It's easy to blame a group of people with one video of stupid people committing needless violence. 🙁27/...

@osint030 @Ex_Trac You can read my full article with all sources used here (@Knack) for FREE. 👇28/...

knack.be/factcheck/fact…

@osint030 @Ex_Trac @Knack Did you learn something from this #OSINT for #FactChecking?

Follow me (@brechtcastel) and check out my channel on #YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCMBPt… 🙏

Older 🧵🧵underneath this tweet:

https://twitter.com/brechtcastel/status/1390688405416198145

29/END