Fact check: How videos are recycled for political purposes

""Especially in times of crisis and conflicts, old videos and photos resurface on social media falsely presented in a current context," said Brittani Kollar, who leads media literacy efforts at the Poynter Institute. The US nonprofit supports fact-checking, training and media criticism. "In wars and conflicts, it's particularly hard to get video footage," she told DW. "That's why manipulated or fake videos often fill that gap, even when they've already been used in other contexts or previously identified as false.""

"The political battle over ICE narratives A TikTok videoshows a teenager on a bicycle being hit by a police car and pushed to the ground. Shortly after, he is taken away. Two videos, one message: In this TikTok post, two older clips are edited together to look like current police violence. That's misleading In reality, the boy thrown off his bike is not the same one being led to the police car. That's because the video is split in two."

"In the first part, the boy is wearing dark pants and speaking English, and the sun is shining. In the second part, the boy is wearing camouflage pants and speaking Spanish, and the streets are covered with snow and ice. The first part comes from a recording made on April 2, 2025, in Deerfield Beach, Florida. In this video, police officers stop several teenagers riding their bikes through the streets."

Old videos and photos resurface on social media falsely presented as current, especially during crises when authentic footage is scarce. Manipulated or fake footage often replaces scarce authentic video from wars or tense events. A media literacy nonprofit supports fact-checking, training and criticism to counter recycled content and misinformation. A TikTok post edited two unrelated older clips to appear as a single incident of police violence linked to immigration enforcement. The first clip shows a boy in dark pants speaking English on a sunny April day in Deerfield Beach, Florida, where officers stopped teenagers on bicycles. The second clip shows a different boy in camouflage pants speaking Spanish on snowy Minneapolis streets on January 13, 2026; masked officers instruct him to show papers and enter a police car. The clips are from different times and locations and do not depict the same person or a single incident.

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