How to tell Truth From Fiction - Debunking Fake News About British Army Lockdown

As the COVID19 virus continues to dominate the global agenda, fundamentally changing how many nations conduct their way of life, rumours are beginning to spread.

In the UK as a raft of government measures intended to reduce the spread of the virus kick in to effect, there has been a marked rise in the amount of misinformation, or misunderstanding about what is going on.

This is particularly notable in the defence space where fears of some kind of London lockdown have led to some people tweeting images purporting to be of British Army convoys getting ready to apparently lead the way into a lockdown situation.

This fear seems to come from bad disaster movies where the Army is usually called into help and this happens with ominous effect, from troops trundling down the street, to callously machine gunning those who would escape (or in the British Army’s case, a bunch of people in shirtsleeves rolled up and down in the manner of a curious masonic ritual with belts on the outside of their jumpers would be on the street trying to work out how on earth Defence Connect is the answer to the problem they’ve got to solve).

It is inevitable that people are uncomfortable and scared. We’re living in unprecedented times where huge changes to our daily way of life are occurring. In this environment rumours are rife and even highly intelligent people get caught up in them. They read theories on twitter from retired supreme intergalactic space commanders about how this is all a biological warfare plot from China, or they watch Russia Today to hear that its all a plot by Porton Down to restore the UK’s place in the world.

The fact is that there is a lot of rubbish being said and amplified and its important to know how to spot it, and what to do about it. The purpose of this short blog is to offer a few tools and tips on how to confirm something is rubbish or reputable.

In the case of the tweet below, we see the suggestion that the Army is about to put the country into lockdown, accompanied by a picture of a bunch of army vehicles on the road. 

On the face of it this seems credible and worthy of retweeting to amplify the message that the Army is taking control. The same image has been shared a lot on twitter by various accounts, which means that its reach is significant. 

But, if you look at the picture for a few seconds it becomes clear that the Army vehicles in question are foreign army vehicles, they are on the wrong side of the road and the trees appear to have more leaves on them than you’d expect to see in the UK at this time of year.Similar footage can be found at this link - a routine vehicle move made out to be something far more than it actually was

This sort of image is accompanied by others suggesting that the Army are on the streets, or that more movements are occurring. Another image used shows troops walking down the streets of London with the headline ’20 min ago Clapham junction’ to suggest the troops are on the move. What it actually shows is a group of Army cadets on a evenings exercise, and not a coup on the mean streets of South London.

People are easily convinced by what they see, and once they’ve been told something is happening – particularly on a social media account by people they trust, it is sometimes hard to persuade them that what they believe to be true is actually fake.

Given all this, what can you do to check the situation? The first thing to do is check, and check again with the official government websites and advice. The COVID-19 webpage is a really good place to start and is being updated constantly with information and advice. If the MOD is deploying to the streets of London, then you would expect to see some mention of this here, rather than via an anonymous twitter account.

Secondly, follow mainstream defence journalists who know what they are talking about. The current crop of journalists are good sources of information and updates – they will be clear what is breaking news, what is unconfirmed and what is actual news.

If you see something and want to get a sense of what is going on, you would be well advised to check the main journalists accounts because if the Army was going on the streets, they would definitely have tweeted about it!

Rely too on things like press conferences and rolling news updates – try to take your news from a variety of sources including BBC, Guardian, Telegraph and so on and see what messages are aligning and what is out of synch. At times of crisis there will be different interpretations of events, so following multiple sources is really helpful to know what is going on.

Its also well worth following the various ‘wire’ services like AP because they will usually run a story quickly. If you read breaking news and the correspondents all use similar language, it may be because its taken from the wire and embellished with more information as it becomes available.

More widely if you see people tweeting images purporting to show the British Army on the streets, have a look around military twitter. There is a great range of official accounts talking about exercise activity, or planned work which may have the original image. Look for tweets by senior officers and spokespeople talking about what the Army is up to – chances are that it is already in the public domain.

You can also look at established military commentators too – for example sites like UK Defence Journal or Save the Royal Navy are bastions of common sense reporting. Check their sites and twitter feeds to see what is going on – if they’re not reporting it, chances are its not real.

In the information age, word can spread quickly about an incident or deployment. If you are doing due diligence on a tweet, then it should only take a small amount of googling to identify whether something is actually going on or not. The chances are though that if major reporters and defence twitter accounts aren’t discussing something about troops on the streets, but a random geezer from South London is, then perhaps one of them is incorrect.

If you see an image as part of a story suggesting riots or violence breaking out then its worth looking to see if the image is real or not. Simple things help like looking at the weather conditions in the photo (is it clearly the wrong season), checking if you can see registration plates of vehicles or roadsigns to spot which country the image is in. There are lots of visual clues that can tell you a lot about a picture.

More widely there are powerful search resources to help you – if you use the website ‘tineye.com’ it is possible to enter an image in and see whether it has been used before. This site will check for previous occasions where the image has cropped up, and the dates when first used. It can prove helpful if trying to date an image – sometimes judicious use of Tineye will show that the image claiming riots are breaking out dates back 10 – 12 years.

For example, the image below is from London riots of 2011. It is a striking image showing riot police going about their duties in a difficult summer.

If you put this image into Tineye, it returns no less than 61 hits (screenshot below) which highlight sites and dates when the image came from. This is worth remembering the next time Gaz on Twitter tries to convince you that there is definitely a riot going on locally - there is more chance of the busload of nurses turning up in time for the last dance at the NAAFI bar than his being right...

Another good source is ‘search google for image’ which comes up if you right click on an image in Chrome. This can be a good way to trace images and similar websites that may be linked to the image. It isn’t always accurate – as the image below of Sir Mark Sedwill suggests that google thinks he is in fact the head of Toyota – but it can be a good way to double check if an image has been posted before.

Finally if you want to demystify what is going on then sometimes a bit of time spent on the MOD website can help provide answers to questions. As anyone who has tried to use defence IT will know, the search engine process seems to rely on the individuals skill at sacrificing small animals and reading their entrails to work out what precise metadata term will generate the magic result, but it can, with sufficient work and choice application of anglo-saxon curses produce results.

For example, if you are interested in how the British Armed Forces will operate in the UK, the policy framework they use and the ways they can be employed, then its well worth reading JDP2-02 (UK Operations: The Defence Contribution to Resilience & Security) to get a detailed understanding of what is going on.

Reading the factual source documents helps contextualise what is going on, so when you read about how the MOD is sending regional liaison officers to local government areas, it becomes a lot less scary when people can understand this is an entirely routine affair and not the sign of a coup.

There is a wider question too about how do you prevent the spread of inaccurate information? It is tempting to retweet images going ‘how silly is this’ but if you do that, it can often have a very wide reach. For every person that looks at your tweet and thinks ‘I agree’, there may be others who question or disagree and in turn challenge back. Your act of tweeting to challenge may in fact end up making the problem worse.

The best thing that can be done is to amplify facts – retweet government advice, retweet trusted experts comments or journalists. Where it is clear that statements of fact are coming out, then this is the most powerful way to get a message across clearly.

This may sound obvious but we live in very strange times. When people are on edge or nervous it is easy to believe things that would normally be rubbished. Humphrey has had several conversations today with people who are adamant that London is on the verge of being put into martial law, even if this hasn’t been announced or suggested in anyway.

Much like people are stockpiling due to hysteria, the idea of ‘well if I don’t get it now then when will I next be able to get it’ seems to be the main driving force behind a lot of this, people can believe what they see on social media channels.

If at all possible think about how your tweets can be amplified, the reach that they will have and who will read them. Sarcasm rarely translates well on the internet, and people don’t know much about the military. If you are a keen reader of defence matters then you’ll know that images of a convoy of warriors by a roadside are not proof of imminent martial law. If you don’t then its easy to think that a bunch of vehicles on the other side of the road with large prominent red crosses displayed are ‘English Army (sic) vehicles’ as some have maintained.

Good detective work on debunking myths!

Be cautious too about professional disinformation. There is undoubtedly a  lot of work being done by those who do not have the British publics best interests at heart to try and cause panic. Some countries are very good at using fake profiles and accounts to build followers and spread the word in a way that seems believing and convincing.

This article by Rolling Stone magazine late last year is a good way of reading how there are plausible and believable accounts out there that are being used to subtly shape how people engage with and believe the news cycle. It is worth doing your homework to understand how, particularly at times like this, Twitter and other social media channels can be used for best effect. The conspiracy theorists are often easy to spot and debunk, the professional ones are a lot harder to find.

We live in unprecedented times, and what matters most now is ensuring that as people worry, that calm, objective and factual reporting is relayed as swiftly as possible. Please remember that all of us have a responsibility to help promote the truth and prevent paranoia and hysteria getting out of hand. This is the hour of social media – when the books come to be written of this period, let us help the future authors write about how it was an enabler for good, not a cause of chaos.