events

Courting justice

Joe Arney — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 19:34:51 +0000

Courting justice Joe Arney Fri, 04/04/2025 - 13:34

By Joe Arney
Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm鈥�18) and Nandi Pointer

Ask any of her students how they prefer to get their news, or search for recommendations, or learn about their favorite TV shows, and Sandra Ristovska will tell you that they go on TikTok.

If you go

What: Justice by Video, a full-day collaborative workshop exploring the roles research and policy can play in creating standards and safeguards around how video and photos are used in legal proceedings.

When: Friday, April 25. The public is invited to a screening of Incident, a short, Academy Award-nominated documentary, at 3:30 p.m. Panel discussions featuring the filmmakers and experts will follow.

Where: Richard Jessor Building, Room 155, 1440 15th St., Boulder. Advance registration not required.

Yet their educations鈥攆rom the time they first set foot in a grammar school classroom鈥攈ave focused on textual literacy, with almost nothing devoted to how video and photos are analyzed.

鈥淲e just assume that everybody intuitively knows how to understand images, because we don鈥檛 have to teach you an alphabet, or grammar,鈥� said Ristovska, associate professor of media studies at the College of Media, Communication and Information. 鈥淏ut we know from research that people can watch the same image and arrive at a vastly different understanding about what that image says or does.鈥�

More: Bringing student activism to TikTok videos

That鈥檚 fun when we鈥檙e overanalyzing a plot twist in Severance. But Ristovska鈥檚 work centers around what happens when videos make their way into a courtroom, where interpretations can influence a person鈥檚 guilt or innocence.

According to one estimate, video appears in about 80 percent of criminal cases, but no guidelines exist for how video can be presented as evidence in court. And that鈥檚 also the case for deepfake videos or media created by generative artificial intelligence.

鈥淎nybody who鈥檚 seen a legal document knows they鈥檙e standardized鈥攊f it doesn鈥檛 look a certain way, it鈥檚 not going to be admissible in court,鈥� Ristovska said. 鈥淏ut when it comes to video, different courts have different guidelines and understandings about what鈥檚 admissible.鈥�

Ristovska has been an important contributor to scholarship in media and the law. At a daylong event later this month, she鈥檒l help steer the conversation around these topics while taking the wraps off the Visual Evidence Lab, a new lab at CMCI that will advance her work in this area.

The workshop, Justice by Video, will bring together judges, attorneys, journalists, and scholars from the humanities, social sciences, law and STEM to develop new avenues for research and potential policy proposals around how to ensure justice is best served. She hopes focusing some of the leading thinkers in this area鈥攁nd encouraging cross-disciplinary discussion鈥攍ays the groundwork for establishing consistent guidelines around visual evidence.

Ristovska鈥檚 personal history plays a role in all this, too. Growing up in what is now Macedonia during the Yugoslav Wars, she still recalls how footage from the fighting upset her parents鈥攅ven if she was too young to understand the news bulletins interrupting her evening cartoons. As part of her graduate school work, she went on to study how footage from civilians and activists made its way to the United Nations鈥� criminal tribunal, in The Hague.

鈥淚 realized the law was an important place to be asking questions about video evidence,鈥� she said. 鈥淪ome of the citizen footage in the tribunal wasn鈥檛 verified through the person who shot it, which had never been the case before. And this footage was both establishing the truth in court while constructing a historical memory about the wars.鈥�

Cross-disciplinary expertise

Sandra Braman, a professor of media and information at Michigan State University, said she is particularly excited about participation in this event because of the range of expertise involved, including practicing judges as well as legal scholars and researchers from across the social sciences.

Braman has twice served as a visiting professor at CMCI, and is considered among the leading scholars in digital technologies and their policy implications. She was impressed with the agenda, which includes small group discussions intended to stimulate cross-disciplinary discussion and a detailed reading list to review beforehand.

鈥淯sually, when you go to the first conference of its kind, it鈥檚 just a chance to gather and talk generally about the topic,鈥� Braman said. 鈥淪andra has put together a very structured set of tasks that are actually very hard questions to guide us on visual evidence.鈥�

Roderick Kennedy, who retired from the New Mexico Court of Appeals after serving as its chief judge, will be part of an afternoon panel discussing the issues raised by Incident, a documentary of a police shooting in Chicago and the role security footage plays in creating a narrative explaining what happened.

Kennedy and Ristovska met through his work with the American Bar Association. Ristovska presented a series of webinars on video evidence and deepfakes to members. They also collaborated when she was a guest editor of an issue of The SciTech Lawyer last winter that took a deep dive on these issues.

Kennedy said video evidence presents similar challenges that he would see with eyewitness testimony throughout his career. Memory is unreliable, he said, as witnesses become suggestible when asked to remember details or are affected by the pressure to have a definitive answer for investigators.

鈥淵ou have a single viewpoint, but it鈥檚 overlaid with other memories that can change things, and is subject to interpretation every time you recall it and restore it,鈥� he said.

鈥楢 vertical learning curve鈥�

A video won鈥檛 change its memory under pressure, but how it鈥檚 captured and edited can influence the way a jury interprets what happened. And while footage from police body cams or the smartphones of bystanders may get the most attention, Kennedy said the issue crops up elsewhere鈥攅ven police interrogations. He shared a case involving a pathologist whose findings in a homicide were influenced by hearing a woman confess to the crime on camera.

Her confession, however, was preceded by an exhausting, seven-hour police interrogation. And because we鈥檝e been conditioned to believe videos show reality鈥攚ithout considering how they were framed, trimmed, slowed down or otherwise edited鈥攖hey have significant potential to mislead jurors.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 the power of video,鈥� Kennedy said. If you only show a jury the last minute or so of that interrogation, 鈥渁ll you see is a mother saying she killed her baby.鈥�

The workshop isn鈥檛 just about editing techniques that may introduce doubt. Invited experts also will discuss deepfakes, an emerging challenge for courts that must catch up to the technology. Kennedy said judges and lawyers 鈥渉ave almost a vertical learning curve鈥� when it comes to the technology.

鈥淵ou have to learn the language of the technology experts before you can accuse somebody of using a deepfake,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd the experts aren鈥檛 taught how to speak legal, or the legal rules for putting their expertise in evidence.鈥�

One thread of Braman鈥檚 research on information policy is the history of facts themselves.

鈥淥ur social orientation around facts provides the context within which we think about evidence,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd though we are talking a lot today about A.I. and the problem of deepfakes, the question of the authenticity and validity of digital information in general actually first arose as soon as the internet became available to the general public. We need to solve this problem yesterday.鈥�

Ristovska said she hopes members of the public attend to watch Incident and start thinking about video as a communication tool that is overdue for guidance.

鈥淲e鈥檙e not going to solve all the challenges around how people see video鈥攚e can鈥檛 do that with any type of evidence,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut I hope we can develop research-based guidelines that promote consistency, fairness and equality in the use of video as evidence.鈥�

Video evidence appears in 80 percent of criminal cases, but a lack of consistent guidelines means there鈥檚 no standard for how media are presented in court. A workshop led by CMCI faculty may change that.

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A body camera strapped to the chest of a police officer. Video appears in about four of five criminal cases, but no standards governing video exist in the U.S. justice system鈥攁nd the problem is growing more complex, thanks to generative artificial intelligence.

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Anonymous — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 07:00:00 +0000

March 16: Wednesday Workshop: Networking Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/18/2016 - 00:00

Date: March 16

Time: 12-12:45pm

Location: Armory 206A, 1511 University Blvd

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