Go Upstream

15 Activity: Trace Viral Photos Upstream

Mike Caulfield

These two photos have been attributed to National Geographic shoots by the same tweeter I mentioned above.

I put the photos below. If you are reading this on the web, go to it. If you are reading this book in PDF form, you’ll have to go find them at the Hapgood blog to use your Google reverse image Search right-click/control-click action.

Bearing It

The first one is easy. Is this real, or fake? And are these National Geographic photographers or not? Is the bear real?

Figure 47

Swan Song

This second one is a lot harder. But is this real or fake? If real, can you find the name of the photographer in the swan and his nationality? If fake, can you show a debunking of it?

Figure 48

Truck Bomb

This next one is political. It was shared by a Twitter user who claimed it was a picture of an Irish Republican Army bombing. To paraphrase the poster: “This is London in 1993 after an IRA truck bomb. We didn’t ban Irish people or Catholics.” The poster making a comparison to recent moves to ban travel from Muslim countries in the U.S.

Is this a picture of a 1993 London truck bombing? If so, how many people died and/or were injured? What was the response?

Figure 49

Going Rambo

Figure 50

Media Attributions

  • bear
  • swan
  • C4bMR-bXAAAYB3n
  • 9c1e9ae6-4b16-486b-9029-9cd7b0130929

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Activity: Trace Viral Photos Upstream by Mike Caulfield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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