UGC in broadcast: keys, technological solutions and dangers

UGC or CGU (User Generated Content) has experienced a gigantic explosion thanks to technological democratization and the audiovisual education of digital natives. How is this concept related to broadcast and in what way can televisions, radios and media outlets adequately manage this endless source of audiovisual assets?

Currently, half of the population of planet Earth, about 4.2 billion people, they have active social networks. Many of them are responsible for generate unpublished content, either through text, audio or video. By pure statistics, it is inevitable that some of these users generate (intentionally or not) attractive, newsworthy and disseminated pieces. Whether for ubiquity (like first-person spectators of a climate catastrophe) or serendipia (those people who record a landscape when something unexpected happens), the content created by these users becomes a asset of extreme value for the general public. This is understood in media contexts, but brands also agree: according to Adweek, approximately 72% of brands trust UGC. They do it so much for their authenticity, as well as for its ability to create engagement with the user.

As audiovisual documentary filmmakers point out, Iris Lopez de Solis y Carlos Martin Lopez in the Ediciones Complutense monograph Citizen journalism and audiovisual archives. Verification, use and management of UGC images, UGC images have been established as a audiovisual source widely used in television news, which implies a series of additional challenges which range from the verification even ethical issues.

Because there is a reality: although the journalist can publicly see a publication of news interest on social networks, cannot use it freely, let alone integrate it into your file. Julia Martínez Zaragoza, lawyer at Bardají&Honrado, clarifies that based on what is included in the Organic Law 1/1982, of May 5, on civil protection of the right to honor, personal and family privacy and one's own image, y in the Organic Law 3/2018, of December 5, on the Protection of Personal Data and guarantee of digital rights, “The unauthorized use and dissemination of a person's image outside the context in which it was published (the social network) constitutes a violation of their fundamental right to their own image, as well as a violation of their fundamental right to the protection of personal data, given that the image is also personal data.” Therefore, Authorization becomes a fundamental requirement.

However, this is not the only challenge that the broadcaster. Beyond getting the authorization to distribute those images, it will be necessary to ensure that the UGC be the original content, since the Redistribution and modification of original content is an intrinsic part of the current nature of social networks.. To address this issue, the technology will be of great help.

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In search of the original UGC

UGC content needs to be identified through four parameters, as they point out Lopez and Martin: provenance, source, date and location.

For the question of origin, López highlights an essential tool for his daily life: the European project Inside, a multitasking solution which has a extension for Google Chrome. This initiative, financed by the project Horizon 2020 of the European Union, allows you to extract keyframes from videos from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or a file. mp4 to later make a reverse search. Likewise, it has a function of EXIF metadata extraction that will allow providing information on the reuse rights for Twitter or YouTube videos. Likewise, Invid has a wide selection of tools for photo checking. Other useful tools today are Search by Image, a Chrome extension that allows you to search in different search engines such as Google, Yandex or Tineye; Bing Images, which allows you to crop specific parts of an image to perform an immersive search, or Azure Video Indexer, an AI API that identifies faces and performs reverse image searches.

The source confirmation It is configured as an essential process when dealing with UGC. At this moment, the documentary filmmaker's work will go through answer questions that try to identify the existence of the user y discover what type of content you upload. For example, if a user generates completely local and highly localized content in the Cantabria region, it could be unlikely that they could have generated the original content of a fire that is happening in Brisbane (Australia).

Finally, about the date and location confirmation, there are tools like Mapillary, a Street View platform that enables web mapping through crowdsourced image geotags; Map Switcher, a Chrome extension that allows you to view a location by switching between multiple map applications; I will cut it off o Worldcam, images from security cameras that are being especially interesting for the coverage of the war in Ukraine; either Wolfram Alpha o Weather Underground que servirán para, por ejemplo, identificar las condiciones metereológicas en un momento concreto. La búsqueda inversa también permitirá conocer en qué momento apareció el vídeo por primera vez, mientras que herramientas como Suncalc.net permitirá descubrir el movimiento solar y las fases de luz solar de un día y hora concreto. Sobre la ubicación, Google Street View, Wikimapia o Geovisual Search ayudarán a geolocalizar un vídeo analizando letreros, localizando monumentos, identificando matrículas o encontrando paisajes distintivos.

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Los metadatos y las redes sociales

Otro procedimiento útil para verificar un contenido es mediante la extracción de los metadatos EXIF. En este conjunto de datos figura información sobre la cámara utilizada, los parámetros del disparo (sensibilidad, distancia focal o apertura del diafragma), modos del disparo, or the características de la foto (tamaño, fecha, hora y lugar). Serán estos últimos datos los que, según López, permitirán conocer la fuente y la geolocalización de una imagen y verificarla. Para extraerlos, una herramienta de utilidad es la extensión de Google Chrome Send to Exif.

Los metadatos EXIF serían de gran utilidad en el tratamiento de imágenes procedentes de redes sociales, si bien gran parte de ellas eliminan estos datos al subir la imagen. Para identificar este contenido, habrá que prestar especial atención a how each platform displays information. In the case of Facebook y Twitter, both show the time selected on the computer and device; In the event that the user is not registered, the tweets appear in the time date in Pacific time, the corresponding official time zone or Coordinated Universal Time. In the case of YouTube (like Instagram), the date and time will correspond to Pacific time. The tools Youtube Data Viewer e Inside They will be able to provide the UTC time of publication (in open) and the conversion to each local time.

The case of TikTok, a tool that we analyzed in depth and that has also acquired great prominence, as López points out, by showing images of the daily lives of citizens during the war; a good opportunity, but at the same time, “a great source of misinformation,” according to the documentary filmmaker. In the case of the Chinese social network, it is more complex to verify the date the video was uploaded, but it is possible. To do this, the source code of the content must be consulted and locate its creation date o “create time” in Unix format. To convert it to format UCT it is possible to use the tool Epoch converter.

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Motivation and content already verified

A estos cuatro elementos se suma la motivación, concepto recogido por First Draft que no fue incluido en la publicación original. La propia Iris López subraya a Panorama Audiovisual la necesidad de considerar este último punto, si bien en la práctica es difícil obtener una respuesta definitiva a esta cuestión: “¿Por qué se creó la cuenta de esa red social, la página web o el contenido a verificar? Este último pilar no se incluye en el artículo de hace cinco años. La motivación de por qué alguien graba y comparte un contenido en las redes sociales es algo difícil de averiguar, aunque tener información al respecto no resultará muy útil en el proceso de verificación”, apunta.

López también considera interesante comprobar si el contenido ya ha sido verificado, ya que la proliferación de UGC ha impulsado un importante número de herramientas que permitirán que, con una simple búsqueda de palabras claves, se pueda localizar un desmentido. In this regard, la documentalista audiovisual y verificadora digital identifica herramientas como el buscador de bulos de Google Fact cheek tools. A nivel temático, destaca la base de datos The Coronavirus Facts y #Ukrainefacts, iniciativas ambas de la International Fact-Checking Network, así como el mapa Russia- Ukraine Monitor Map, en el que ha colaborado Bellingcat, portal specialized in investigative journalism through fact-checking and open source research.

Regarding the work of verifiersLópez considers that they are very interesting for Spain. public initiatives as Efe Verifies. At an international level, the documentary filmmaker highlights Snopes, The Observers, Decodex, Visual Forensics of The Washington Post or tools from international agencies such as AFP Fack Check, Reuters Fact Check, AP Fact Check o Eurovision Social Newswire. Finally, López mentions the observatory Iberify.

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How do I access UGC content?

López and Martín's document refers to three channels through which broadcasters will be able to access UGC images. The first are the international agencies, which they already offer to their clients UGC image submissions (which will provide immediacy and closeness, in line with citizen journalism) prior verification. Sometimes, The speed and relevance of the images will prevail to the verification of the same. In the event that the owner of the rights ends up demanding a compensation, the responsibility would fall on the television that has used the images, and in no case about the agency. Another notable external source is news consortia as ENEX o Eurovision News Exchange, which, again, have a unit dedicated to image verification.

In many cases, especially in relation to local television coverage, it will be the television stations themselves that will search for or receive images from social networks On this occasion, the verification teams of each television must take charge of carry out the necessary procedures for the correct use of the images, although there are times when these are shared without being 100% verified.

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UGC content in newsrooms

The use of UGC by broadcasters, especially in those cases in which it is decided prioritize immediacy, causes problems in archival material. The images will be stored as part of the information programs or entertainment that the will host without authorization. Previously, a ingest on editorial servers for the work of editing the pieces.

According to the study by López and Martín, on televisions such as Castilla La Mancha Television, Aragón Television, Telemadrid, Atresmedia, TV3 or TVE there is a manifest recommendation of Do not use these images without permission, although these images are spreading more and more frequently. Given this situation, which has been accompanied by the rise of fake news as a problem derived from the UGC explosion, a significant number of television stations have promoted verification divisions y desarrollado protocolos para gestionar el uso de estos contenidos.

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Retos del UGC

A día de hoy, quedan muchos desafíos por superar. He valor del UGC, the fuerza de sus imágenes and the aceptación de una menor calidad de imagen surgida a raíz de la reducción de esfuerzos tecnológicos por la pandemia han derivado en que los usuarios no les moleste ver una imagen pixelada o de dudosa fuente.

He impacto y la inmediatez, en un contexto en el que las televisiones deben rivalizar con el poder del titular en redes sociales, puede sobrepasar barreras necesarias correspondientes a la propiedad intelectual o a cuestiones éticas. López señala como ejemplo acontecimientos como breaking news, catástrofes naturales, elecciones y noticias de gran impacto, which are usually accompanied during the following 24-48 hours of major misinformation.

The commitment to UGC is clara. We will have to wait if this path arrives accompanied by action, cataloging and verification protocols that allow this very attractive source to standardize in broadcast production with all the guarantees that have historically accompanied the television information.

A report by Sergio Julián Gómez