Authors
A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.
US President Donal Trump claimed that Hydrochloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, is a potential cure for the COVID-19. After Trump’s claim, there was a global surge in the demand for medicine, and since India is a dominant manufacturer of Hydroxychloroquine, India decided to supply the medicine to many countries including the US. The video which is going viral on social media, claims that a group of American youth is singing the Indian national anthem to express their gratitude towards India for supplying the medicine.
We were sent this claim on our official WhatsApp number. When we watched the video, we found that a group of American youth was indeed singing the Indian national anthem. To know more about the video, we searched YouTube using the keyword ‘American youth singing Indian national anthem’ and we found that the same video was uploaded on YouTube about two years ago.
When we watched the aforementioned YouTube video, we noticed that the viral video is a part of it. When we performed a framewise analysis, we found that the viral video is obtained after trimming the first 10 seconds and the last 7 seconds from the YouTube video. The video dated 13th August 2017 can be watched below.
It is noteworthy that the first 10 seconds and the last 7 seconds of the video contain information that could reveal the real information about the video. This can be the reason why the video is trimmed in such a way that the name of the publisher and the other details are not revealed in the video. For instance,
At 0.1 second, the frame reads, “For this 71st Independence Day”. Notably, India’s 71st Independence day was celebrated in 2017 and this frame was trimmed as it is self-explanatory.
At 0.6 seconds, the frame reads, “Rickshawali decided to do something special, by uniting people from all over the world”, again a potential clue that could lead to the source of the video.
At 1.12 seconds, the frame reads, “Happy Independence Day”. This part of the video was trimmed as India sent Hydroxychloroquine to the US in the month of April only so it could have revealed the motive behind creating the video i.e. to commemorate the Independence Day of India.
At 1.14 seconds, the CTA buttons appear along with manually written text which could have led to the source of the video hence this part of the video was also trimmed.
Since it was evident from our fact-check that the video was intentionally trimmed to spread misinformation, we searched further to find more claims around the video, we found that many Twitter users have been sharing this video since 2017. The same can be rectified here.
We also found the same video shared by a verified Twitter who goes with the same name as of the aforementioned YouTube channel ‘Anisha Dixit’.
Since the title of the video reads, “Americans Sing the Indian National Anthem for the First Time | Rickshawali” and the channel which has published the video goes with the name ‘Anisha Dixit’, we tried to know if Anisha Dixit is the original publisher of the video. Using the advanced search feature of Twitter, we found a tweet made by the same Anisha Dixit where she informs that she has changed her name to ‘Anisha Dixit’ from the pseudonym ‘Rickshawali’.
It is evident from our fact-check that the viral video which is being shared as ‘American youth expressing their gratitude towards India for sending HCQ by singing the Indian national anthem’ was published to commemorate Indian Independence Day in 2017. Hence the claim is being shared in a ‘Misplaced Context’.
Sources
- Twitter Advanced Search
- Google Search
Result: Misplaced Context/Manipulated Context
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Authors
A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.
