Cryptographic tools for authenticating the provenance of web-based information are a promising approach to increasing trust in online news and information. However, making these tools’ technical assurances sufficiently usable for news consumers is essential to realizing their potential. We conduct an online study with 160 participants to investigate how the presentation (visual vs. textual) and location (on a news article page or a third-party site) of the provenance information affects news consumers’ perception of the content’s credibility and trustworthiness, as well as the usability of the tool itself. We find that although the visual presentation of provenance information is more challenging to adopt than its text-based counterpart, this approach leads its users to put more faith in the credibility and trustworthiness of digital news, especially when situated internally to the news article.
more »
« less
Transparency, Trust, and Security Needs for the Design of Digital News Authentication Tools
Americans' trust in news is declining, and authenticity and transparency challenges in digital publishing contexts pose unique challenges to the ability to effectively gratify their information-seeking needs via online media. Cryptographic technologies and web-based provenance indicators have the potential to enhance the trustworthiness and transparency of digital communication, but better understandings of news consumers practices and needs are required to develop practical tools. Through a representative online survey of 400 digital news consumers and 19 follow-up interviews, we investigate how users authenticate and assign trust to news content, and identify specific needs pertaining to news transparency and authentication that could be met by digital news authentication tools. While many users currently rely on political ideology to assess news trustworthiness, we find that users of all political orientations see value in independent provenance and authentication tools for digital news.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1940679
- PAR ID:
- 10475041
- Publisher / Repository:
- Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
- Volume:
- 7
- Issue:
- CSCW1
- ISSN:
- 2573-0142
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 44
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
As news organizations embrace transparency practices on their websites to distinguish themselves from those spreading misinformation, HCI designers have the opportunity to help them effectively utilize the ideals of transparency to build trust. How can we utilize transparency to promote trust in news? We examine this question through a qualitative lens by interviewing journalists and news consumers---the two stakeholders in a news system. We designed a scenario to demonstrate transparency features using two fundamental news attributes that convey the trustworthiness of a news article: source and message. In the interviews, our news consumers expressed the idea that news transparency could be best shown by providing indicators of objectivity in two areas (news selection and framing) and by providing indicators of evidence in four areas (presence of source materials, anonymous sourcing, verification, and corrections upon erroneous reporting). While our journalists agreed with news consumers' suggestions of using evidence indicators, they also suggested additional transparency indicators in areas such as the news reporting process and personal/organizational conflicts of interest. Prompted by our scenario, participants offered new design considerations for building trustworthy news platforms, such as designing for easy comprehension, presenting appropriate details in news articles (e.g., showing the number and nature of corrections made to an article), and comparing attributes across news organizations to highlight diverging practices. Comparing the responses from our two stakeholder groups reveals conflicting suggestions with trade-offs between them. Our study has implications for HCI designers in building trustworthy news systems.more » « less
-
This paper describes how cryptographic provenance can serve as a proactive, partial solution for mitigating misinformation. Drawing on literature from human-centered computing and usable security, journalism, and cryptography, we discuss the advantages and limitations of both content-based and technical approaches to the problem of online misinformation. We argue cryptographic provenance systems designed for usability can reduce the spread of misinformation by surfacing provenance information and making this information salient and acceptable to information consumers. We highlight challenges and open research areas related to designing usable cryptographic provenance systems, specifically concerning two key stakeholder groups: journalists and news consumers.more » « less
-
This paper describes how cryptographic provenance can serve as a proactive, partial solution for mitigating misinformation. Drawing on literature from human-centered computing and usable security, journalism, and cryptography, we discuss the advantages and limitations of both content-based and technical approaches to the problem of online misinformation. We argue cryptographic provenance systems designed for usability can reduce the spread of misinformation by surfacing provenance information and making this information salient and acceptable to information consumers. We highlight challenges and open research areas related to designing usable cryptographic provenance systems, specifically concerning two key stakeholder groups: journalists and news consumers.more » « less
-
Disinformation activities that aim to manipulate public opinion pose serious challenges to managing online platforms. One of the most widely used disinformation techniques is bot-assisted fake social engagement, which is used to falsely and quickly amplify the salience of information at scale. Based on agenda-setting theory, we hypothesize that bot-assisted fake social engagement boosts public attention in the manner intended by the manipulator. Leveraging a proven case of bot-assisted fake social engagement operation in a highly trafficked news portal, this study examines the impact of fake social engagement on the digital public’s news consumption, search activities, and political sentiment. For that purpose, we used ground-truth labels of the manipulator’s bot accounts, as well as real-time clickstream logs generated by ordinary public users. Results show that bot-assisted fake social engagement operations disproportionately increase the digital public’s attention to not only the topical domain of the manipulator’s interest (i.e., political news) but also to specific attributes of the topic (i.e., political keywords and sentiment) that align with the manipulator’s intention. We discuss managerial and policy implications for increasingly cluttered online platforms.more » « less
An official website of the United States government

