Rihanna shares fake photo of Australia bushfires after it goes viral

Amidst massive destruction to life and properties due to the escalating bushfire crisis in Australia, a lot of misinformation is reportedly being spread on the internet. Not only regular among people but even a few celebrities have fell victim to the wrong maps and graphics believing them to be true. Recently, American singer Rihanna shared a misinterpreted image of burning fires in Australia.

Shared the fake image on Instagram

On January 6, the Work hitmaker took to Instagram to share an image of a map, which claimed to show Australian bushfires but eventually it turned out to be fake. A reverse search revealed that the image was actually artist Anthony Hearsey's visualisation of the data collected over a month on fires in Australia. In the text written along with the picture, he explained that it was a compilation and not all the areas were burning.

He further added that it was a 3D visualisation of the hotspots in Australia and not a photo.  He also urged the people to think of it as a graph and note that it was created as an art piece. Soon after it went viral, Instagram flagged it as false information. Hearsey also justified the marking saying that a number of people have misled others calling it a NASA photo which is probably why Instagram has marked it as “False Information”

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Adding to the image shared by Rihanna, there are various other maps doing the rounds on social media which have led to a lot of confusion amongst the netizens. 

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