Dialectical Structured Reasoning for Explainable Multimodal Fake News Detection

Current multimodal fake news detectors predominantly function as opaque classifiers, offering limited deductive transparency and little insight into how conflicting evidence is reconciled. To address this limitation, we propose Dialectical Structured Reasoning (DSR), a framework modeling fake news detection as an explicit dialectical process over multimodal social context. DSR instantiates two opposing agents: a Verifier, which constructs evidence paths supporting semantic consistency, and a Debunker, which actively explores exposing logical or factual contradictions. Then a differentiable Judge agent adjudicates between these competing perspectives by integrating local evidence with global parametric knowledge. Experiments on three benchmarks demonstrate that DSR achieves state-of-the-art performance while producing transparent, dialectically grounded explanations that closely mirror human reasoning process. 1 The empty grocery store shelves show the effect of America's "Build Back Better" plan On Oct. 18, Newsmax host Chris Salcedo interviewed Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., about the supply chain issues…… In the short clip, Comer faulted Biden's economic policies and COVID-19 vaccine requirement for large employers for labor shortages, high prices and depleted store shelves. Conservative commentator Kimberly Klacik posted a photograph of empty shelves at a grocery store, with a hashtag suggesting they were due to economic policies…… Biggest shortage of food on Oct 15th and limited gas get ready This tweet shows you know nothing about how the world works So true. Just went to the store today. Terrible Newsmax poaches photos from London,