News authentication and tampered images: evaluating the photo-truth impact through image verification algorithms

Abstract

Photos have been used as evident material in news reporting almost since the beginning of Journalism. In this context, manipulated or tampered pictures are very common as part of informing articles, in today's misinformation crisis. The current paper investigates the ability of people to distinguish real from fake images. The presented data derive from two studies. Firstly, an online cross-sectional survey (N = 120) was conducted to analyze ordinary human skills in recognizing forgery attacks. The target was to evaluate individuals' perception in identifying manipulated visual content, therefore, to investigate the feasibility of “crowdsourced validation”. This last term refers to the process of gathering fact-checking feedback from multiple users, thus collaborating towards assembling pieces of evidence on an event. Secondly, given that contemporary veracity solutions are coupled with both journalistic principles and technology developments, an experiment in two phases was employed: a) A repeated measures experiment was conducted to quantify the associated abilities of Media and Image Experts (N = 5 + 5) in detecting tampering artifacts. In this latter case, image verification algorithms were put into the core of the analysis procedure to examine their impact on the authenticity assessment task. b) Apart from conducting interview sessions with the selected experts and their proper guidance in using the tools, a second experiment was also deployed on a larger scale through an online survey (N = 301), aiming at validating some of the initial findings. The primary intent of the deployed analysis and their combined interpretation was to evaluate image forensic services, offered as real-world tools, regarding their comprehension and utilization by ordinary people, involved in the everyday battle against misinformation. The outcomes confirmed the suspicion that only a few subjects had prior knowledge of the implicated algorithmic solutions. Although these assistive tools often lead to controversial or even contradictory conclusions, their experimental treatment with the systematic training in their proper use boosted the participants' performance. Overall, the research findings indicate that the scores of successful detections, relying exclusively on human observations, cannot be disregarded. Hence, the ultimate challenge for the “verification industry” should be to balance between forensic automations and the human experience, aiming at defending the audience from inaccurate information propagation.

Theory and Applications of Web 3.0 in the Media Sector

“…The seventh paper focuses on the development of a computer-supported toolbox with online functionality for assisting technically inexperienced users (journalists or the public) in visually investigating the consistency of audio streams to detect potential interventions coupled with disinformation [29]. Vryzas, Katsaounidou, Vrysis, Kotsakis, and Dimoulas (2022) elaborated on previous research [37,38] to set an audio forensics web environment (which is very limited), emanating on the photo/image forensics examples (and their offered functionalities), with multiple related platforms being already available online [39]. The proposed framework incorporates several algorithms on its backend implementation, including a novel CNN model that performs a Signal-to-Reverberation ratio (SRR) estimation with a mean square error of 2.9%.…”

A Prototype Web Application to Support Human-Centered Audiovisual Content Authentication and Crowdsourcing

“…This is the main idea of the ReVeal project [14], which deals with tampered images and was a major inspiration of the present work. There is evidence from experiments that users with no technical knowledge were able to detect tampering of images with the support of such visualizations [6]. In this approach, a gamification approach was also tested that allowed users to ask for the help of such a visualization toolbox [5] in order to detect fake news and proceed in the game [4].…”

“…While the detection of manipulated photos/images and the evaluation of the associated forgery attacks remain critical [6], audio and video content have become even more popular nowadays. In this context, audio offers some unique features, such as less demanding processing needs and the inherent time continuity, making tampering inconsistencies easier to reveal [7,8].…”

Strengthening the Capacity of Tourism Aware Groups Through Citizens Journalism Assistance As A Promotion Effort for Village Tourism Labuhan Burung Village Towards Tourism 4.0

“…The characteristics of investigative news organizations in Indonesia between 2010-2012 were investigated by Kurnia [39]. Authentication of tampered with news and images: evaluating the impact of correctness of photos through an image verification algorithm studied by Katsaounidou [40].…”