Emerging Media Technology - Exploring Media Provenance

By Ella Hamilton

Deep in the digital age, context and information revolving around images is easily lost in the chaos. To combat this, and the use of images to spread misinformation, the New York Times Research and Development team launched the News Provenance Project.

In the first iteration of this project in 2019, the New York Times Company launched a Content Authenticity Initiative in partnership with Adobe and Twitter, intending to make attributions a standard amongst online platforms. The need for this kind of accreditation developed once digital content and its platforms grew to an enormous size, and with its growing popularity and use came an increase in untrustworthy and inauthentic content. Together these companies joined in launching what would be the first iteration of a content attribution system, and the concept has since been developed and added to other digital platforms.

In 2020, the New York Times Research and Development team made further developments into making content attribution permanent, by investigating how to get an author’s credit to travel with a piece of media. They collaborated with IBM Garage to develop a database to leverage private blockchain technology by storing photo metadata on it. On the individual level, this looks like each photo’s metadata (the record of who took it, when it was created, etc.) being permanently associated with the image, traveling with it across different platforms.

When thinking about this technology through a journalist’s lens, it’s important to see how this technology will be used to prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation through images.

The tool they developed with this blockchain technology can be used by publishing companies to ensure credit for their images and that all necessary information is permanently attached to it.

The following year, the team developed a prototype with the Content Authenticity Initiative that uses secure sourcing, a cryptographic approach to give viewers confidence in the origin of a photo. This technology can be easily used by a wide range of journalists by integrating these established prototypes into their news content.

However, news media provenance can’t be an industry standard until all major outlets integrate it into their practices. Until then, there still presents a great risk for the spread of misinformation through photos.

Journalists who use this technology to verify authenticity of images they wish to use in their reporting first verify the source, then the media is stored in a secure platform, and then the ownership of the image is in imbedded in its metadata. There are many benefits to adding this kind of technology to the journalism industry, especially as we are deep into a “digital age.”

The first benefit is that it prevents misinformation and disinformation from being spread through images. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to decipher when an image was taken, thus it can be used in reporting on a topic that is completely unrelated. Additionally, images can be taken completely out of context on purpose by platforms in order to spread a false narrative. This technology works to prevent bad actors from proliferating false information through photos on digital platforms.

The technology creates a more context-rich experience for news consumers. These readers have the opportunity to explore the metadata of an image, learning more about who took it, where it was taken, and when it was taken. This in turn also creates an opportunity for the photographers and content creators to earn greater exposure and recognition for their work, that may have otherwise been lost as the image traveled.