In Northern Ireland, where political, social and economic debate is often delineated along lines of perceived communal affiliation, false information and rumours have the potential to increase communal division and tensions, especially at particular times of the year.
Images play a big part in the types of information shared online here, and it is sometimes difficult to figure out whether an image on the internet is genuinely what it claims to be. There’s a “stickiness” to images, and they can communicate and infer so much more than a 280 character tweet. To paraphrase the old saying — a fake/misleading image can make its way halfway around Northern Ireland, while the accurate information is still putting on its shoes!
So what can we do? Many of us feel we are not tech savvy or simply do not have the time to check every image we see online or receive via WhatsApp. Continue reading Checking online images in Northern Ireland
