Fotografiet bluffar- och hjärnan applåderar

Abstract

Despite the increased awareness of manipulated images in todays society, people still tend to overestimate their ability to detect alterations within the image. The big technological development have made it more accessible and easy to manipulate, while it also makes it more seamless. The purpose of this Bachelor thesis is to theoretically examine how the development of image manipulation technologies affects people´s ability to detect manipulated images. With a three-dimensional combined theory model, four images were examined to explore the relation between the technological complexity, cognitive mechanisms and the contextual framing of manipulated images. The analysis show that viewers rely on different heuristics rather than technical cues when determining an image credibility. Moreover the contextual information often tends to outweigh visible signs of manipulation, regardless if it is an analoge or digital image. Additionally, the results indicate that increased technical complexity does not necessarily make manipulations more difficult to detect, but instead making viewers´ expectations and prior beliefs central to the decision making. The findings hints that a gap between human perceptual ability and the technological development is widening, and the thesis therefore highlight the importance of a new evolved way of critical thinking within the visual environment.