When disaster strikes, the veracity of news is just as important as how quickly it gets reported. To this end, the European Journalism Centre has released the Verification Handbook to guide you through the process of distinguishing faked and factual user-generated content.

Tools like Twitter and Facebook make community involvement in the news process more in-depth and critical than ever, but these advancements come with the potential drawbacks of unknown sources. Keeping community engagement strong while also preserving journalistic integrity can be made a little easier if you know how to spot the submissions that may not be real.

The Verification Handbook points out that there is not a single, all-encompassing answer to determining the veracity of content. Instead, it offers suggestions for where to start looking, and how to go about finding answers. “The question at the heart of verification is: ‘How do you know that?’”

One tool that the handbook recommends is your own community: Verily is a platform currently in development that crowdsources information that either discredits or confirms social media posts. “We expect Verily to be used to help sort out conflicting reports of disaster damage, which often emerge during and after a major disaster.”

The handbook covers a range of subject matter that requires verification, including case studies for each that provide real-world examples of the tools and processes at work.

You can read the book online now for free, before the PDF, print, and Kindle versions are made available on February 7th.