Rochester Institute of Technology RIT Scholar Works Theses 5-2020 An Assessment of Media Consumers’ Ability to Distinguish the Level of Post-Processing in Journalistic Images Emily Shriver [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.rit.edu/theses Recommended Citation Shriver, Emily, "An Assessment of Media Consumers’ Ability to Distinguish the Level of Post-Processing in Journalistic Images" (2020). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. Accessed from This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by RIT Scholar Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of RIT Scholar Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. An Assessment of Media Consumers’ Ability to Distinguish the Level of Post-Processing in Journalistic Images by Emily Shriver A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Print Media in the Department of Graphic Media Science and Technology in the College of Engineering Technology of the Rochester Institute of Technology May 2020 Primary Thesis Advisor: Christine Heusner, M.F.A. Secondary Thesis Advisor: Bruce Myers, Ph.D. Tertiary Advisor: Michael Riordan, M.S. Committee Approval Christine Heusner, M.F.A . April 27, 2020 ________________________________________________ ________________ Primary Advisor Date Bruce Myers, Ph.D. April 27, 2020 _______________________________________________ ________________ Secondary Advisor Date Michael Riordan, M.S. April 27, 2020 _______________________________________________ ________________ Tertiary Advisor Date Barbara Birkett, Ph.D. April 27, 2020 _______________________________________________ _________________ Graduate Program Director Date Bruce Myers, Ph.D. April 27, 2020 _______________________________________________ ________________ Administrative Chair, GMST Date Table of Contents List of Figures .................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... vi Abstract ............................................................................................................................. vii Chapter 1 Introduction .........................................................................................................1 Photojournalism and Image Manipulation .............................................................. 3 Trust in News Photography and Sources ................................................................ 5 Statement of the Problem ........................................................................................ 5 Chapter 2 Theoretical Basis .................................................................................................7 Visual Competency ................................................................................................. 7 Overview of Digital Image Creation ....................................................................... 8 Photojournalism Ethics for Photo Manipulation..................................................... 9 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 16 Chapter 3 Literature Review ..............................................................................................17 Media Forensics .................................................................................................... 17 Photojournalism .................................................................................................... 20 Journalism as a Persuasive Force .......................................................................... 22 Human Visual System Perception of Images........................................................ 23 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 26 Chapter 4 Research Objectives ..........................................................................................27 i Research Questions ............................................................................................... 27 Chapter 5 Methodology .....................................................................................................29 Post-Processing Definitions .................................................................................. 30 Creation of Data Set .............................................................................................. 30 Survey Mechanism................................................................................................ 36 Participant Recruitment ........................................................................................ 38 Analysis of Survey Responses .............................................................................. 39 Chapter 6 Results and Analysis .........................................................................................40 Participant Behavior .............................................................................................. 40 Research Question 1 ............................................................................................. 41 Research Question 2 ............................................................................................. 46 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 57 Chapter 7 Discussion and Conclusion ...............................................................................59 Results Relating to the Literature ......................................................................... 59 Limitations ............................................................................................................ 61 Opportunities for Further Research ...................................................................... 62 Implications........................................................................................................... 63 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 66 References ..........................................................................................................................70 Appendix A Augmenting Information: Google Analytics ................................................79 Participation Data.................................................................................................. 80 ii Appendix B Alternative Response Grading .......................................................................82 Appendix C Image Characteristics and Response Summary .............................................84 Appendix D Distributions of Percent Correct for Images based on Manipulation Category ............................................................................................................................................99 iii List of Figures Figure 1. Images are broken down into two main categories (people/no people) and two sub-categories (indoors/outdoors) based on content. ............................................ 32 Figure 2. The left image is the enhanced version of the image on the right. The image has been cropped, the color balance has been shifted so that the whites appeared neutral (less red), and the image has been sharpened. Original photo: Nesson, Audi, [photograph]. Retrieved February 2, 2019 from Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/u1CAj5HJzO4 ......................................................... 33 Figure 3. The image set included 164 images. 53 Originals, 52 Enhanced, and 59 Manipulated Images. ............................................................................................. 34 Figure 4. Example of an image displayed in the user interface for survey mechanism. (Original image: Heusner, Christine. [photograph] (copyright permission of Christine Heusner) Manipulation: blue sky changed to grey clouds) ................... 37 Figure 5. Original was the response 104,437 times or 54% of all responses, which is almost twice as likely (1.79x) of responses of Enhanced (58386 responses/30%) and 3.36x more likely than responses of Manipulated (31004 responses/16%). 42 Figure 6. Distribution of participant’s percent of correct responses. The highlighted column shows most participants had a 35-40% accuracy rate. ............................. 43 Figure 7. The average number of correct responses is not related to the number of images responded to by participants. 100% of survey completion signifies that those participants responded to all 164 images. ............................................................. 44 iv Figure 8. The average number of correct responses is plotted against the average response time per image that the participant spent per image (some outliers not depicted). ............................................................................................................................... 45 Figure 9. Distribution of correct responses. Each point represents one image. Orange x’s represent original images. Green dots represent enhanced images. Blue diamonds represent images that are manipulated. The placement of each marker represents the number of responses on the x-axis, compared to the number of those responses which correctly assigned the image on the y-axis. ..............................................