Box 9.1: Assessing and Minimizing Risks When Using UGC As the human rights channel curator at WITNESS, Madeleine Bair leads a team that sources, verifies and contextualizes citizen video of human rights abuse around the world. Prior to that, she traveled the world for nearly a decade as a print, radio and multimedia reporter. Her stories have appeared in The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle and Orion, and have been broadcast on PRI’s “The World” and “POV.” Photos and videos that emanate from areas of the world rife with repression and political violence, or that document vulnerable populations, come with risks beyond the possibility that the content has been manufactured or manipulated. In these situations, individuals behind and in front of the camera may face the risk of arrest, harassment, torture or death. That danger can increase if international media picks up the footage. We saw this during Iran’s Green Revolution of 2009, when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard­1 used photos and video stills they found online to target protesters and crowdsource their identification, actions that sent a chill through the activist community. Identity exposure puts individuals at risk of retribution by repressive authorities2, and can lead to social stigma as well, with its own potentially severe consequences. Just as news organizations adhere to standards for protecting the privacy of rape victims, journalists should consider these same standards when using video that exposes vulnerable people, particularly if it appears to have been taken without their informed consent. For example, in 2013 U.S. online media and advocacy organizations reported on an alarming pattern of abuse targeting LBGT youth in Russia. Many of their articles embedded photographs and videos shot by perpetrators abusing their victims — exposure which could perpetuate the harm and stigma3 to those victims. Journalists and others should not censor video taken by activists who knowingly take risks to speak out or document their community. But journalists should take basic steps to identify and minimize harm to those who may be unaware of those risks, or who lack the capacity to give informed consent to the recording. In the case of the Russian abuse video, it’s clear that the victims did not consent to being a part of such footage. 104