Description

Juliana Castro-Varón is the founder of the digital open access publisher Cita Press, and a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. This episode she and Elizabeth discuss the historical examples of image manipulation, how photographic manipulations can mislead the public and the impact of images on our memories. They also talk about ways to spot fakes.

Additional resources

• Early in the episode Juliana mentions this article about Photoshop in The Verge about the history of this photo editing software.
• Juli talks about one of the very first known examples of image manipulation - a composite photograph of Abraham Lincoln’s head superimposed on someone else’s body. Here it is.
  • Factcheck: In the episode Juliana incorrectly notes Abraham Lincoln’s year of death — the U.S. president was assassinated in April 1865. This date also precedes Thomas Hick’s photo composition of Lincoln, which is generally agreed to have been done after his death, rather than as part of an election campaign.
• Juliana tells us about the photographer, William Mumler, who made ghost images using the technique of double exposure. They also talk about his trial - he was arrested for fraud - and acquittal. This other article also takes a broader look at the history of ‘ghost photography.’
• Both Elizabeth and Juliana mention deep fakes and AI manipulation several times - this is a topic that will take a full episode sometime, but for now here’s a good introduction.
• Juliana references this article — Changing history: doctored photographs affect memory for past public events (Sacchi, Agnoli & Loftus, 2007) — about the impact of images on our memories, and Elizabeth noted there have been a number of studies in this area. 
• Juliana notes that one of the concerns about AI-generated images is that they draw on currently existing archives of information, which tend to be dominated by western cultures. Here’s an interesting look at what happens because of this.
• Finally, Elizabeth asks what we can do about image manipulation, and Juli suggests that understanding the technologies and the techniques at play is the most useful strategy. Here’s a few tips and tools that help uncover manipulated images:
  • Image Edited
  • Tin Eye Reverse Image Search
  • The hidden signs that can reveal a fake photo (BBC, 2017)

Check out www.polcommtech.ca for annotated transcripts of this episode in English and French.