Verification
Overview
This team is responsible for verification of posts. They will work to corroborate incoming posts with Uchaguzi trusted partners, and using other existing citizen reports and mainstream media.
They will:-
Work with the Media Monitoring and Structuring Teams to assess reports
Collaborate with Publishing and Escalation teams for any urgent or critical items.
Work with our partners to assess the veracity of information in the reports.
Use the Internet and social media to the determine the reliability of sources (triangulate)
Verification best practice
Is it real content? Prove it, Check it three times.
Is it Critical or Urgent? Cross-reference the Uchaguzi Survey + Categories definitions
Is the post a duplicate?
Any Corroborating evidence? e.g. video, picture, similar reports on Uchaguzi,
Any Corroborating evidence on social or mainstream media?
Any similar reports from Trusted Partners?
Step by Step Guide
Log into your team slack channel
Make sure you’re logged into slack and announce to your team that you’re starting your shift. If you don’t have access to the slack channel, please get in touch with an Ushahidi team member or your team leader and we’ll grant you access as per the Uchaguzi Access Chart here
Log in to the Uchaguzi Deployment here
If your account has not been upgraded to manage incoming posts, please alert your team lead with your username and we’ll upgrade you.
Navigate to the “Unverified Posts” Saved search
All posts that have not been verified will be contained in this saved search. To access these posts, click on sort and filter, go to filter by then click on saved searches and select Unverified Posts as shown below
Prioritize posts that have been flagged as “Voting issues”, “Security issues” and “Dangerous speech”, and especially those that require escalation.
You should be able to create saved searches of your own so that you’re able to filter according to this criteria, as shown below
We will work with your team lead to determine how to coordinate prioritization amongst your team
Select a post to verify
Select a post by clicking on the post card as shown below. Your post detail will pop up on the right hand side of your post card.
If the post is being edited by someone else on your team, you will see a notice on the top of the post detail pane. You will not be able to edit the post again until the post has been saved and taken out of edit mode by your teammate.
Please note: if you are an admin, you have the ability to override the edit lock. If you choose to override the lock, any changes being made by the person editing at that time will be lost if they have not saved them. Proceed with caution.
Review your post
Verification of posts will happen in the following ways:-
Close collaboration and contact with our trusted partners on the ground
Messages from trusted reporters on the ground will be flagged for easy identification and verification
Check for corroborating evidence e.g. videos and images attached to the post
You can test photo authenticity using http://reveal-mklab.iti.gr/reveal/
Search for similar posts on Uchaguzi platform
Check for similar reports by using the search bar on the top of the page as shown below. The more reports that can corroborate the issue described, the better the chance of being able to verify the post.
Make sure to add notes about your research for other team members to review
Set appropriate category for Verification and Escalation tasks
Verification: It is important to note that not all posts will be possible to verify.
If you were able to verify this post, deselect the “Unverified” category, and select the “Verified” category, to mark this post as verified.
If you were unable to verify this post, and are uncertain, mark this as unverified. It is always better to leave uncertainty as "unverified", and indicate that you were unable to verify as shown below
If you were able to determine that the post is FALSE, mark it as false.
Please select all methods you used during the verification process.
Mark the Verification task as complete.
Save your updates to the post.
Escalation: If this post needs to be escalated/requires urgent attention, select the “Needs escalation” category, and flag it to your team lead, who will fast track its processing by the emergency team.
Warning: PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH THE POST
Save and move on to the next post
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