Fake News: U.S. Aircraft Given to the Taliban Crashes in Afghanistan. Or Did It?

On October 31st, 2023, a video began to circulate on X, formerly known as Twitter, of a U.S. military plane crashing in Afghanistan. This video, which originated on YouTube, is captioned “A U.S. C-130 Hercules that was given to the Taliban in 2021 has crashed in Afghanistan” (iceman_fox1, 2023). Additionally, you can hear a man off-camera shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) as the plane crashes. As it turns out, after examining the YouTube video, the ‘more’ tab on the video incudes a second part to the caption that reads: “Filmed with Digital Combat Simulator” (iceman_fox1, 2023).

Digital Combat Simulator is a “popular battlefield video game which simulates military aircraft, tanks, ground vehicles, and ships” (AFP Pakistan, 2023). This game was used to simulate a crash of a U.S. C-130 Hercules aircraft, but the footage itself spread fake news across the internet. Some users noticed that the video was footage from a game, but most users assumed that it was real.

Hadas Emma Kedar (2019) notes that, “the most common manifestation of fake news is false stories that appear on the internet and circulate via social media. These stories appear on websites which mimic online news outlets and contain articles presented as factual stories but are entirely fabricated.” For many people on the internet, they read the caption of this video and assumed the news to be true and that this plane crash really did occur. The addition of the man off-camera shouting, as well as loud sirens as the plane crashes, makes it seem as though that this video was made and posted with the intention to trick users. Although the YouTube video included that the video was filmed using a Digital Combat Simulator in the ‘more’ section, the main caption, added sounds and effects, and the accounts on Twitter posting the video without the Digital Combat Simulator information, turns this into fake news. [B.R.]

References

AFP. (2023, December 1). Video game footage falsely shared as US military plane crash in Afghanistan. AFP Pakistan. [URL]

iceman_fox1. (2023, July 7). A U.S. C-130 Hercules that was given to the Taliban in 2021 has crashed in Afghanistan. #dcs [Video file]. YouTube. Retrieved from [URL]

Kedar, H. E. (2020). Fake News in Media Art: Fake News as a Media Art Practice Vs. Fake News in Politics. Postdigit Sci Educ, 2, 132–146. [URL]

Example 2

“Seeing is Believing” 

The idea of having a video added into a news story that is fake is a method that has been used by many fake news sources in order to attempt to persuade the consumer that something is real when it is in fact not. This idea can go in two different directions because of the digital literacy of some people when they see a video included into an article.

Given this figure, it shows that having included a video in a fake news post, that there are three different ways that people are affected in the way they will interact with said news. Some people may be more able to detect fake news when videos are added, while some are less able, those that are able to distinguish the fake news may be more willing to report the post as fake news, as well as there may be a larger amount of engagement on the post because of the inclusion of a video. These are all the things that are factors in the overall number of people that report a post as fake news.

Source:

“Debunking a Viral Claim: The Truth Behind the ‘Chandrayaan-3’ Flight Video”