A new €2.4 million EU project, will aim to tackle the issue of “fake news” by tracking and flagging online disinformation, especially through social media.  Led by the DCU Institute for Future Media and Journalism (FuJo) in collaboration with the ADAPT Research Centre for Digital Content Technology at Trinity College Dublin and the content intelligence company NewsWhip.

The three-year project, called PROVENANCE is funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme and will focus on finding solutions to enable people to distinguish between original information and manipulated information or disinformation. The term “disinformation” or the most commonly quoted phrase “fake news” can be understood as false information deliberately created and spread to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.

The PROVENANCE approach will involve the use of a ‘verification layer’ that will employ advanced digital technologies for multimedia analytics (including image forensics) to record any modifications to content and to identify similar pieces of content. A ‘Verification Indicator’ will contextualize individual pieces of content with relevant information, including when the content was registered, by whom, and any subsequent transactions. The project solutions will be of particular use for consumers of news and political information but also for content creators who want to secure their content from manipulation or unauthorised use.

The project solutions will be of particular use for consumers of news and political information but also content creators who want to secure their content from manipulation or unauthorised use.

Commencing in December PROVENANCE will be led by Dr Jane Suiter, Associate Professor at FuJo. The project team includes academic and industry partners from Ireland, Spain, the Czech Republic and Austria. Irish collaborators include the SFI ADAPT Research Centre for Digital Content Technology at Trinity College Dublin and the content intelligence company NewsWhip.

ADAPT Centre Principal Investigator, Professor Owen Conlan said: “PROVENANCE represents a significant opportunity to develop trust and confidence in how online news has been sourced. It will empower consumers of news to trace the origins of the individual pieces of content that go into a news article. This will be achieved by combining advanced technologies such as blockchain, personalization, media analysis and knowledge engineering, all core expertise of the SFI ADAPT Centre. PROVENANCE will offer consumers with the ability to identify “fake news” and manipulated content, allowing them to examine what alterations have been made to media and to scrutinize what sources have been used to form the news item.”

The project will work closely with citizens and content creators to address their needs and improve the digital environment for sharing content and information.

The establishment of the PROVENANCE project reflects an acute awareness of the challenges posed for citizens by large scale disinformation, including misleading and outright false information.

In 2014, the World Economic Forum identified the rapid spread of misinformation online as one of the top 10 trends in modern societies while recent European Commission research found that 80% of Europeans have come across information that they believe was false or misleading several times a month and up to 85% thought it was a particular issue for their country.

FuJo director and Project Co-ordinator Dr Jane Suiter said:  “The speed and volume of disinformation on social media has the potential to undermine democracy, business, and social reputations. This project will enable the tracking of online content and enable the level of its manipulation through web and social media platforms to help consumers and business not only track their own material but to have confidence in the content that they see online.”