KEY DEFINITIONS Eyewitness Video This guide refers to “eyewitness video” to describe videos taken by individuals at the scene of an incident. These videos are often shot by average bystanders, sometimes by activists, and sometimes by victims, survivors, or perpetrators of abuse themselves. Eyewitness videos usually reach investigators or the news media via online platforms like YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. Other times, they are sent from a source to investigators via email, chat applications, or another form of communication, or found on the computer or cell phone of the filmer. What they have in common is that you, the viewer—the reporter, investigator, filmmaker, or advocate assessing the footage—were not involved in the filming process. Hence, you have a number of questions about the video, its authenticity, intent, and context. This type of footage is also commonly referred to by the terms “user-generated content,” “UGC,” “open-source video,” or “citizen video.” Curation Curation vs. Preservation The process of curation is distinct from preserving footage for potential use in a specific legal or advocacy context. Thus, when we advise, for instance, to edit a video to blur faces, this guidance is targeted toward the public sharing of the video. Human rights advocates will want to keep an archived copy of the original footage for potential use to share with a select audience, such as with local prosecutors. In fact, we recommend that as a first step, those working with footage that may provide valuable documentation should save and archive a copy of the video. Many online videos of human rights abuse are removed from websites for a myriad of reasons, including violation of terms of service of online platforms. Whether or not you plan to curate the video for a public audience, saving a copy will ensure preservation of the visual documentation it provides is preserved. For more archiving resources, see the Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video.1 178 VIDEO AS EVIDENCE: ETHICAL GUIDELINES V 1.2 SHARING This guide addresses the curation of eyewitness video, by which we mean methods of publicly sharing and contextualizing eyewitness videos or the information contained in them. That could take the form of a hyperlink to a YouTube URL in a human rights report, a documentary film that includes clips from eyewitness videos, a blog that embeds relevant online videos, an article reporting on the issue documented in the footage, an interactive map placing videos by location, or other means of sharing eyewitness footage in the public domain.