Tag Archive: contextual analysis

Presentation of InVID verification technologies at JUDNM-T

InVID verification technologies at JUDNM-T

The InVID project and the InVID verification technologies, were presented on a workshop focusing on tools for content verification. The workshop was co-organized by CERTH/InVID and the Media Informatics Lab of the Journalism & Mass Media Dept. of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in collaboration with the Open Knowledge Greece Foundation and the Journalists’ Union of Daily Newspapers of Macedonia – Thrace (JUDNM-T). It took place on Wednesday 6th of June 2018, in the conference centre of JUDNM-T, in Thessaloniki, Greece. The audience of the workshop (approximately 40 people), was comprised by journalists, academics and Master students of the Journalism & Mass Media Dept.

After the introductory part of the event, which was made by Prof. Andreas Veglis, the workshop started by an overall presentation of the InVID project by Dr. Vasileios Mezaris, the project co-ordinator. Dr. Mezaris explained the project’s motivation with the help of some indicative examples of fake news. Following, he described the project’s goals and overall concept for meeting these goals, and briefly discussed the developed integrated technologies for newsworthy media collection and verification. The given presentation can be seen below.

Subsequently, Mr. Evlampios Apostolidis from CERTH-ITI, gave a talk on fake news that rely on video reuse. In particular, Mr. Apostolidis presented some examples of such fakes, discussed the most common approaches of journalists to deal with this type of fake news and explained how the InVID technologies can assist journalists to identify the original video source. For this, he presented the developed web application for video fragmentation and reverse keyframe search, that enables the users/journalists to perform reverse video search at the fragment-level, and detect previously published versions of the same video online. The given presentation can be found below.

Following, Dr. Symeon Papadopoulos from CERTH-ITI, discussed the current status on the creation and spread of fake news and rumors via social networks and listed a number of credibility signals that could allow a user (i.e. a journalist or a media verification expert) to evaluate the veracity of a news item. Finally, we presented the functionalities and characterists of the developed context analysis and aggregation toolkit that has been developed in InVID and is integrated in the InVID Verification Plugin, and highlighted the creation (and future public release) of a constantly extendable Fake Video Corpus, that can support the current and future reseach on this field.

The first part of the workshop ended with a presentation focusing on image forensics analysis, made by Dr. Markos Zampoglou from CERTH-ITI. Dr. Zampoglou explained the existing challenges related to the detection of tampering of digital images, highlighting the fact that the sharing of these images via social media platforms entails a re-compression process that usually erases most of the digital traces that could assist the identification of manipulations. Based on this observation, he stressed the need to analyse the most earliest version of a digital image, and discussed the funtionalities of the REVEAL Media Verificaiton Assistant that is integrated in the InVID Verification Plugin. The given presentation can be seen in the following.

The second part of the workshop was a hands-on session, where the participants of the workshop had the opportunity to get activelly involved in a step-by-step process containing:

  • the installation of the InVID Verification Plugin for both Chrome and Firefox users (made by Evlampios Apostolidis);
  • a brief explanation of all different components integrated in the plugin (given by Evlampios Apostolidis);
  • a real-time debunking of a couple of examples of fake news based on video re-use (performed by Evlampios Apostolidis);
  • a real-time debunking of a couple of examples of fake news based on context change (performed by Olga Papadopoulou, also from CERTH-ITI);
  • a real-time debunking of a couple of examples of fake news based on image tampering (performed by Markos Zampoglou).

The aforementioned examples were used for demonstration purposes, while an additional set of examples was provided to the participants of the workshop, aiming to motivate them to discover the functionalities, capabilities and limitations of the different components of the plugin, and send us their feedback (via the integrated survey) concerning their experience with this tool.

InVID plugin surpassed 3000 downloads

InVID plugin surpassed 3000 downloads

We are very pleased to announce that our free plugin that supports video verification has surpassed 3.000 downloads. The functionalities of this integrated toolbox for content verification are now widely used by journalists, experts of the human rights community, and others dealing with video verification.

We thank all users and supporters of this technology and we promise to make it even better! Would you like to help us on this? Then, simply take the survey and give us feedback about the tool!

If you haven’t discovered the tool yet, get it for free from: http://www.invid-project.eu/verify

Survey about the InVID Verification Plugin

Survey about the InVID Verification Plugin

InVID at MIL meeting on social media detection and verification

InVID at MIL meeting on social media detection and verification

The InVID project and the developed technologies for newsworthy media collection and verification, were presented on a meeting focusing on tools for detection and verification of videos shared on social networks, that was co-organized by CERTH/InVID and the Media Informatics Lab of the Journalism & Mass Media Dept. of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, on Thursday 14th of December 2017.

An audience (approx. 80 people), comprised by professors, academics and students of the Journalism & Mass Media Dept, journalists and media verification experts, was initially informed about the InVID project by the project co-ordinator Dr. Vasileios Mezaris, who introduced the project’s motivation, goals, overall concept and integrated technologies for newsworthy media collection and verification.

Following, Mr. Evlampios Apostolidis from CERTH-ITI, gave a talk on fake news that rely on video reuse and the way that InVID handles such fakes. In particular, he presented the developed web application for video fragmentation and reverse keyframe search, that assists journalists to perform reverse video search at the fragment-level, and detect previously published versions of the same video online.

Then, Dr. Symeon Papadopoulos from CERTH-ITI, discussed methods for automated detection of fake posts on social media and highlighted the efficiency and functionality of an InVID tool (which was based on one of the outcomes of the Reveal EU-funded project) for contextual analysis. This tool is capable to identify and evaluate verification-related content, and provide clues about the trustworthiness of a social media item to the journalists.

Subsequently, Dr. Markos Zampoglou from CERTH-ITI, presented the developed tools for image forensic analysis. Dr. Zampoglou described, with the help of some representative examples, different types of image tampering, explained the InVID apprach to identidy many of them, and outlined the challenges of this task, the limitations of existing approaches as well as some future directions.

Finally, Mr. Denis Teyssou from AFP, joined the meeting via Google Hangouts and gave a nice presentation about the verification functionalities of the developed plugin for fake news video debunking.

Details about the event (in Greek) are available at: http://pacific.jour.auth.gr/?p=2896

The program of the event (in Greek) is available at: http://pacific.jour.auth.gr/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/program_InVid.pdf