Under the title “Verify Digital Ads”, the Arab Fact-Checkers Network (AFCN), led by ARIJ, organized on December 13, 2021 the second webinar of the series of webinars of the “Edit and Verify” project, which was launched by the network in partnership with the Meta Journalism project, with the participation of more than 190 participants via Zoom and 800 viewers on ARIJ “Facebook” page.
The webinar was moderated by Saja Mortada, the Manager of the Arab Fact-Checkers Network (AFCN). In the webinar, the expert in fact-checking misinformation and disinformation online, Craig Silverman, who works at Propublica, trained the participants on the verification techniques of digital ads.
The webinar tackles the various forms of digital ads, and the tools for analysing them to track down their sources. Silverman also presented the Facebook ad library that collects all ads on Facebook.
The webinar included practical examples to verify advertisements on some sites and to identify the type of advertisements published on them.
Craig answered the participant’s questions on the relationship of advertisements and disinformation, and how the digital ads use the data of social media users to target them and the concerns related to their privacy.
Edit & Verify, is a project that targets journalists, investigative journalists, content creators, journalism students and fact-checkers across the region with a focus on Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Palestine, and Iraq, to raise their capacity and skills, and help them verify different types and forms of content disseminated online.