From that tip, Carvin enlisted his followers by asking them to help confirm whether the mortar in question was Israeli. They responded with a mix of useful tips and views, along with some dead ends. He eventually received specific information that helped answer the question: In the end, the weapon wasn’t Israeli; it was Indian. And it wasn’t a mortar at all. Carvin said one way he knew he was onto the correct information was that he heard it from multiple sources whom he knew were unconnected to each other. “In the case of what we did for the so-called Israeli weapons, I had a lot of people that were giving me essentially the same information and they didn’t really know each other so I captured some of that in my Storify,” he said. It’s important to remember that one thing that helped Andy Carvin do what he did was his reaching out to others for help in a very human and approachable way. He also treated those he came into contact with as colleagues, rather than as just sources he could command to do his bidding. Journalists and others who simply hand out orders get very little in response, but treating people like human beings makes all the difference. New York Times war reporter C.J. Chivers has taken advantage of a similar approach as Carvin’s to verify bombs used in various conflicts, and saysc the process arrives at the truth far quicker than would have been possible in the past. With any given piece of information, there are likely to be knowledgeable people in your social circle (or in their broader web of connections) who know the truth about that incident or event. You just have to find them. Said Chivers: “The proof in this case was made possible with the help of the standard tools of covering war from the field: the willingness to work in the field, a digital camera, a satellite Internet connection, a laptop, an e-mail account and a body of sources with specialized knowledge. But there was a twist that is a reflection of new ways that war can be examined in real time - by using social media tools to form brief crowds of experts on a social media site.” Chivers has also celebrated the achievements of a British “citizen journalist”d by the name of Brown Moses. He’s a blogger whose real name is Eliot Higgins, and who has developed an expertise in chemical weapons by watching and verifying thousands of YouTube videos of the conflict in Syria. Higgins had no training in either journalism or military hardware, but has become a key link in the chain of verification, to the point where professional journalists like Chivers and even aid agencies have come to rely on him. New, critical sources like Moses can emerge in c http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/following-up-part-i-battlefield-refuse-social-media-and-qaddafis-cluster-bombs/ « d http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/21/frontroom-blogger-analyses-weapons-syria-frontline « 74