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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 16 2018, @08:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the rightly-so dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Fake or real? New study finds consumers wary of manipulated photos

In the age of fake news and doctored photos, wary consumers are not nearly as gullible as one might presume—especially if they have knowledge of social media, experience with the internet and are familiar with online photo-imaging tools. But the source of the images does not matter much as people evaluate what is fake and what is real, a University of California, Davis, study suggests.

In an online experiment with 3,476 people ranging from 20 to 87 years in age, researchers found that most people were able to correctly identify fake images, rating image credibility fairly low on a 7-point scale (1 being not credible at all, 7 being extremely credible). This was true even when they were told they came from The New York Times or NPR, or other known news organizations.

"We found that participants' internet skills, photo-editing experience, and social media use were significant predictors of image credibility evaluation," said the study's lead author, Cuihua (Cindy) Shen, professor of communication at UC Davis. "The results show that participants, no matter how careless or distracted they may be, can still be discerning consumers of digital images."

The findings, published in the journal New Media & Society, surprised researchers. Credibility of the source, and acceptance by others (those who hit buttons to share, like, "favorite" or retweet images), swayed photo viewers in previous studies, but not so much in the current study.

More information: Cuihua Shen et al, Fake images: The effects of source, intermediary, and digital media literacy on contextual assessment of image credibility online, New Media & Society (2018). DOI: 10.1177/1461444818799526


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by TheFool on Tuesday October 16 2018, @01:38PM (1 child)

    by TheFool (7105) on Tuesday October 16 2018, @01:38PM (#749516)

    Most people seem to be evaluating the image itself rather than some whisperings of who the source of the image is - and people seem to be getting better at it. That's good! That's exactly how it should be.

    If we're going to survive the internet age with free speech intact we'll need to get better at filtering out garbage, and garbage can come from anywhere. Relying on the state, some random cabal of corporations, or mob rule to tell us what is and isn't garbage is poison to the idea of free speech or free thought.

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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by DannyB on Tuesday October 16 2018, @01:52PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 16 2018, @01:52PM (#749521) Journal

    By training human screeners to get better at detecting fake images, we can then use those results to better train deep-fake AI algorithms to create better fake images.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.