Accounts and pages on social media circulated an image, whose publishers claimed that it documents the raising of the former Syrian regime's flag during protests in the Ghwayran neighbourhood of the city of Al-Hasakah, claiming that the person who raised it is believed to be a "Baathist" or among those who call themselves the "Ghwayran revolutionaries".
The Kashaf team verified the circulating image by searching with keywords, and the results led to a video documenting the protests from the same location.
By carrying out a close visual examination of the video's scenes, it emerged that the raised flag visible in the image is the Iraqi flag, and not the flag of the defunct Syrian regime as the image's circulators claimed.
Why is the report misleading?
Identity attribution error: The claim rested on exploiting the camera angle or the poor quality of the image to assert that the former Syrian regime's flag was raised at protests in the Ghwayran neighbourhood of Al-Hasakah, while close visual examination of video from the same location shows that it is the Iraqi flag, which makes the claim misleading.
