How we tackle fake news? (Case Study)
At the end of March 2017, news about “Dubai shifting from skyscrapers to spacescrapers” created a buzz in the Gulf media and on social media outlets as well. It talked about the construction of a skyscraper that would be dangling in the air over Dubai by a high strength cable from a large asteroid, 50 kilometers above earth. This tall tower was designed by a architecture office based in New York City.
Media outlets, including major global news networks, went on to reveal and cover this news in different ways, describing the building as an architectural miracle and futuristic construction that would have a home point in the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. “Latest Architectural Trend: Tower Hanging from Asteroid in Air over Dubai,” reads one of the CNN Arabic headlines. So what is the story behind this building?
In fact, this is the question with which I started to assess the accuracy of this story within the framework of my work in the Alkunnash project, which is aimed at verifying news in the Arab Gulf region. A rule adopted by the Associated Press for verifying user-generated content suggests “finding the original source and conducting the reporting around it.” This is what I did. In this case, we have an announcement from an office called Clouds Architecture, registered in New York 2010.
The office’s page in fact talks about the building by mentioning the aforementioned details, stating that it is named Analemma Tower. It is somewhat clear that it is talking about a futuristic proposal within the framework of what could be accomplished from manipulating asteroids. “manipulating asteroids is no longer relegated to science fiction.” The office stated.
Fun Idea, but not for implementation
“It is a fun idea that gets engineers and architects thinking outside the box, which is its purpose, (but) For an actual implementation, I think it’s a bad idea.” says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Despite all that, the media in the Gulf talked about this proposed construction as if it was going to take place tomorrow. It was also exploited for the purpose of promoting the success story of Dubai by depicting it as one of the cosmopolitan smart cities which are good at attracting state of the art projects.
Most of the headlines covering this project placed Dubai in the spotlight. Being the home of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest structure in the world with a total height of 828 metres; the funder of research projects on cloud seeding to produce artificial rain and increase rainfall rates in the city, Dubai has always been the center of catchy headlines. This makes reading a story about a tower hanging in the air over Dubai easy to believe without any need to question its accuracy.
We tend to believe that referring to Dubai in the Clouds Architecture announcement was not because Dubai has tall buildings only. “the proposal calls for Analemma to be constructed over Dubai, which has proven to be a specialist in tall building construction.” as the office declared. It has also a marketing aspect. But this is not enough to make a judgment about the story.
On the other side, this was enough for the Arab Gulf media outlets and social media sites to take this piece and restructure it by manipulating with its content and context for different reasons.
In the Alkunnash website, we adopt the categorization developed by Claire Wardle from First Draft News, who added the manipulated content among the seven different kinds of Mis And Disinformation.
Based on that, we contacted the Clouds Architecture Office via its email address and Twitter account to ask for further information about the tower, particularly the proposal of Dubai as a home point for the building. For instance, we wanted to know whether the mention of the city was made as part of an agreement with Dubai, and the timetable expected by the office for reaching the implementation of such a tower.
“If we’re serious about developing solutions to these problems, we also need to think about who is creating these different types of content and why it is being created.”, Claire Wardle reported.
No Answer
we made four failed attempts to urge the office to comment on the matter. Waiting for the office’s feedback on the questions made verifying the story take more time with no luck.
This is one of the cases where the source or original content is of significance. We still have much to say about the manipulation of this story and creation of misleading headlines by media outlets. The office could have made a turning point, putting an end to the exploitation of its content, not only on the level of social media sites that lack professional standards in publishing news, but also on the level of major news networks like CNN.
In fact, this is one of the reasons why my project is called “AlKunnash”, which is an Arabic term meaning “the original source”, which is related to our work, since the verification of news often requires going back to the original source.
Returning to the original piece about Analemma Tower written by the architecture office was very helpful, since we were able to know the original context of the story and compare it to the distorted media coverage that followed. However, that was not enough. This content is not the kind that can be verified by either declaring it is correct or wrong only, but it is also very important to figure out whether it is possible to become a reality and comprehend the motives of the original source for releasing such content.
The announcement of the tower is written in way that opens the door for speculations, or at least some of statements — such as the one that included Dubai — were worded in a vague fashion. If the office gives a response, that would be evidence we could show the people and say “Dubai will not shift from skyscrapers to spacescrapers,” as the media portrayed, not in the short run at least, as the project is still in the framework of futuristic possibilities that science could reach by using asteroids. However, that did not happen yet.
During the exhibition held by CUNY Tow-Knight Center to showcase media startup projects developed by the 2017 fellows, one of the guests asked me what I would do if I worked on assessing the accuracy of a story and did not reach a decisive and clear result regarding it. “Since I am unable to make a certain judgement, I will simply not publish anything.” That is exactly what I did concerning the proposed structure in the city of Dubai.
