Finding and contacting video uploaders
Storyful journalists go to extraordinary lengths to find content owners and talk to them about their incredible eyewitness videos. One of the best examples of Storyful’s ‘digital footprint’ analysis, wherein we try to locate the uploader, is outlined below. Names and addresses have been blacked out in some images. This process took approximately 40-60 minutes.
Step 1
One Direction take questions from fans. The video was posted to a YouTube account listed as luvvvmusic, with user-name bieberYES.
Step 2
There was a link to a Twitter account with the same user-name. This gave us the girl’s first name, ‘X’.
Step 3
We went back through the photos on her Twitter account, searching each photo of her with Google image search. We then found a picture of a text message from a friend, ‘Y’, stating she had won tickets to a One Direction concert.
Step 4
We searched ‘Y’ through Google and eventually found her YouTube account.
Step 6
‘Y’ had videos which featured ‘X’. After searching through those videos we came across one that had ‘X”s full name listed in some credits.
Step 7
We also found the name of the high school she attended and used that to locate the area in which she lived.
Step 8
We then searched White Pages with her last name and the name of the town. This gave us two results, both people registered to the same address.
Step 9
We first took the male’s name and searched it through Google but found nothing useful.
Step 10
We then took the female’s name, ‘Z’, and searched it through Google.
Step 11
This gave us a YouTube video in which she had featured. She had a strong resemblance to ‘X’, which led us to believe she was her mother or a family relation.
Step 12
We returned to ‘X”s Facebook profile and searched her friends list for ‘Z’. They were friends on Facebook.
Step 13
We returned to White Pages and got the mobile number listed for ‘Z’.
Step 14
After explaining who we were and what Storyful does as a social media agency, she confirmed she was ‘X”s mother and we had a chat with both of them, after which we had obtained ‘Z”s email address.
Step 15
Storyful subsequently discussed permission regarding usage and courtesies.
