Misinformation and Content Authenticity
Fighting Fake News
DECaDE researchers are developing new approaches to help people better understand the origins and evolution of information online. By combining advances in AI with evidence gathered from multiple sources, DECaDE is creating tools that provide greater transparency around how claims emerge, spread, and are supported or challenged.
This research addresses a growing challenge in the digital age. While fact-checking and content moderation can help identify false or misleading claims, they can address only a subset of the information people encounter online. Understanding where information comes from, how it evolves, and what evidence underpins it is increasingly important in a rapidly changing information environment.
Rather than asking technology to determine what is true or false, these approaches help people make their own informed trust decisions. By providing greater context around the information they encounter, DECaDE’s research supports a more transparent, accountable and resilient digital information ecosystem.
DECaDE’s collaboration with Adobe and the Content Authenticity Initiative has played an important role in accelerating innovation in media provenance technologies. This partnership has resulted in the translation of research into practice, contributing to the development of technology that supports authenticity and value creation across the creative ecosystem, which we believe is essential to the future of art and media.”
Andy Parsons
Sr. Dir. Content Authenticity Initiative, Adobe.
Research Highlights
Beyond Metadata: Three pillars for Durable Media Provenance
DECaDE researchers have played a leading role in the development of media provenance technologies, working closely with the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative and contributing to the emerging C2PA standard for Content Credentials. The team has also chaired key C2PA working groups on watermarking and distributed ledger technologies.
A major challenge for provenance systems is that metadata can be removed as content is shared online, particularly on social media platforms. To address this, DECaDE developed new content fingerprinting and invisible watermarking techniques that enable media to be reconnected to trusted provenance records even when metadata has been stripped away.
This work introduced the concept of Durable Content Credentials, combining metadata, watermarking and fingerprinting to create provenance information that can survive common platform transformations.
DECaDE also co-developed the TrustMark watermarking technology with Adobe. Released as open source under an MIT licence, TrustMark is now widely used in industry to support robust and interoperable media provenance systems.
Team: Tu Bui, Alexander Black, John Collomosse
Designing Provenance People Can Trust
Alongside its technical advances in media provenance, DECaDE has explored how provenance information can be made meaningful and useful for creators, journalists, educators and the wider public.
The research focuses on how provenance can communicate context, attribution, creative intent and usage rights, moving beyond a simple distinction between AI-generated and human-created content. This work was recognised with the Best Paper Award at ACM Creativity and Cognition 2025 for Content Authenticities: A Discussion on the Values of Provenance Data for Creatives and Their Audiences.
DECaDE has also developed AI-powered tools to make provenance easier to understand. The ImProvShow project uses large language models to summarise complex provenance information into clear, accessible explanations of how content has been created or modified over time.
Beyond research, DECaDE has brought together creative, academic and industry communities through workshops, events and public engagement activities, helping to shape the future of trustworthy and transparent digital content.
Team: Caterina Moruzzi, Alexander Black, John Collomosse
Provenance of Narratives
Understanding where narratives come from and how they evolve is critical for addressing misinformation. However, existing provenance technologies and standards, including C2PA, focus primarily on tracking media assets rather than the stories, claims and narratives they communicate.
The research explores how claims can be verified by drawing on multiple sources, mirroring approaches used in journalism and open-source intelligence (OSINT). By combining Large Language Models (LLMs) with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), DECaDE has developed methods for gathering, comparing and contextualising information from the internet and contextualize it within the narrative being fact checked.
In collaboration with the University of Oxford, DECaDE researchers developed two prototype systems MAD-Sherlock and CRAVE. A key insight has been the use of multiple LLMs that debate one another to assess which aspects of a narrative are supported or challenged by external sources.
This work advances new approaches to narrative verification, helping people better understand the origins, evolution and credibility of information online.
Team: Arka Dey, Georgia Channing, Christian Schroeder de Witt, Phil Torr, John Collomosse
Managing Trust After Fake News Attacks
As fake news and online misinformation become more prevalent, organisations face growing challenges in maintaining public trust. DECaDE researchers explored this issue through a study of vaccine hesitancy, examining the impact of misinformation on public confidence in the HPV vaccine in Ireland between 2014 and 2019.
The research found that factual information alone is often insufficient to counter emotionally charged misinformation. Instead, successful responses rely on what the team terms emotional legitimacy – building trust through credible advocates who can connect with audiences through personal experience and shared values.
A key example was the work of Laura Brennan, who became a powerful advocate for HPV vaccination by sharing her personal story. Her efforts helped rebuild public confidence and contributed to a significant increase in vaccination uptake across Ireland.
The findings highlight the importance of combining evidence-based communication with empathy, trust and authentic human stories to respond effectively to misinformation and restore long-term public legitimacy.
Team: Itziar Castello, Marie Joachim, Glenn Parry
