Mediaforensics

Mediaforensics, or multimedia forensics, is a field of digital forensics dedicated to evaluating media content—images, audio, video, and documents—to determine authenticity, integrity, provenance, and authorship. It supports investigations, journalism, and legal proceedings by assessing whether media has been manipulated or misrepresented.

Techniques span image and video forensics (sensor pattern noise analysis, demosaicing and resampling checks, compression artifact evaluation, frame-rate and timestamp analysis), audio forensics (spectral and microphone characterization, noise-reduction artifact assessment), and document forensics (handwriting analysis, font and layout examination, metadata and EXIF/IPTC review).

Operational methods include metadata analysis, device attribution, chain-of-custody procedures, hash-based integrity verification, and reproducible workflows. Forensic testing increasingly incorporates synthetic-media detection, deepfake detectors, and cross-media correlation to corroborate findings across different data types.

Applications cover law enforcement, courts, journalism, platform moderation, security investigations, and corporate risk assessment. Challenges include the growth of manipulated media, data volume, adversarial counter-forensics, privacy concerns, and a lack of universal standards for method validation and reporting.

Standards and guidelines are developed by organizations such as NIST, IEEE, ISO, and professional forensics bodies, emphasizing chain of custody, data integrity, method transparency, and evidence reproducibility. The field continues to evolve with new datasets, open-source tools, and collaboration among investigators, researchers, and media institutions.