Usable News Authentication: How the Presentation and Location of Cryptographic Information Impacts the Usability of Provenance Information and Perceptions of News Articles

Cryptographic tools for authenticating the provenance of web-based information are a promising approach to increasing trust in online news and information. However, making these tools’ technical assurances sufficiently usable for news consumers is essential to realizing their potential. We conduct an online study with 160 participants to investigate how the presentation (visual vs. textual) and location (on a news article page or a third-party site) of the provenance information affects news consumers’ perception of the content’s credibility and trustworthiness, as well as the usability of the tool itself. We find that although the visual presentation of provenance information is more challenging to adopt than its text-based counterpart, this approach leads its users to put more faith in the credibility and trustworthiness of digital news, especially when situated internally to the news article.