Targeting the Caravan: Debunking an Anti-Migrant Video Spread as U.S. Right Wing Propaganda
By: Citris Policy Lab
Tags: Computational Propaganda, Immigration, Social Media, Osint, Bots

Venezuelans took to the streets in 2017, some wearing helmets and holding shields to brace for the severe response from the Maduro regime against their calls for greater democracy. Citizens captured the brutality on their cell phones and posted on social media, enabling the world to watch protestors felled by tear gas, water cannons, and bullets.

A year and a half after the protests in Venezuela, a video (see VID 01) depicting protesters being blasted to the ground by high pressure water cannons was circulated on Twitter by @RightWingLawMan. Disturbingly, this tweet wasn’t lamenting the violence in Venezuela, but rather fueling hatred against Central American migrants: “I like watching them get slammed into the ground,” tweeted @LindyWithAWhy, in response to the video. “START SHOOTING,” added @NMLarry1.

Tweet posted by @RightWingLawMan with misattribution of video of the Venezuela protest.

The gross misrepresentation of events exemplified in this tweet came to my attention during my involvement in a research project between the CITRIS Policy Lab and the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley which analyzed thousands of tweets from the top 10 most influential bot and non-bot accounts spreading anti-migrant propaganda on Twitter leading up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. A team of students spent 6 weeks analyzing and deconstructing examples of harassment and hate speech from these tweets.

In this case, @RightWingLawMan used this video to mislead his audience and stoke hateful sentiments targeting the migrant caravan traveling to the U.S. border through Mexico. His tweet sought to justify the violence against the protesters in the video, citing federal law and the role of the President as “commander-in chief” and characterized the caravan as “massive” and an “invasion” to invoke violent military force against civilians. Upon analyzing this tweet, I provide evidence of a galling contradiction embedded in the American right wing whose members condemn repressive governments such as Maduro’s as well as the people fleeing these hostile environments.

As a Venezuelan native, I have seen countless videos from the 2017 protests. While combing through anti-migrant tweets for this research, I immediately flagged this video as a possible fake. Using online discovery, reverse image search, and satellite imagery, I was able to reveal the misleading nature of this tweet by verifying and geolocating the video embedded in the tweet.

The shield which is almost ripped out of a protestor’s hands as they are blasted to the ground by the water cannon in seconds 0:08–0:10 is painted with the flag of Venezuela. The use of water cannons and the presence of the Venezuelan flag spurred my initial suspicions of this video of the “caravan invasion.” Since VID 01 is embedded in the tweet, I pulled out keyframes which I then ran through the Yandex reverse image search engine. The search tool led me to an earlier use of the video (VID 02), which had been originally posted on YouTube on May 16, 2017.

Comparison of video embedded in the tweet (VID 01) and same video posted to YouTube in 2017 (VID 02).

Once I discovered that this video was from 2017, and therefore not of the 2018 migrant caravan, my next step was to find its exact location. I found a video (VID 03) which compiled scenes of government repression on the Autopista Francisco Fajardo in Caracas. A minute into the video, specifically at 1:19–1:21, I found a scene that appeared to match VID 01 and Vid 02. VID 03 was clear enough to see a road sign that helped to confirm the location. A side-by-side comparison of the two scenes yielded clues for geolocation.