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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) by OrugTor on Tuesday October 16 2018, @04:22PM

    by OrugTor (5147) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 16 2018, @04:22PM (#749574)

    The problem with a shopped image goes beyond acceptance. If the viewer realizes the image is untruthful do they unsee it? That image left a certain impression at first glimpse and that impression lingers in the subconscious.
    Further, it was a trial. When you look at an image on a screen you don't rate it for credibility; you see what you expect to see. "Wary consumers" are not at all wary once they are done with the trial.

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