Mona Kasra
· Associate Professor, Digital Media DesignVerifiedUniversity of Virginia · Art History
Active 2011–2021
About
Mona Kasra is an Iranian American new media artist, designer, and interdisciplinary scholar. Her research investigates the political and theoretical implications of visual media technologies within our culture and cross-culturally. Her creative practice experiments with the affordances of media technologies within artistic forms and in a variety of improvisational framings. Her artwork has been exhibited widely in galleries and film festivals across the US and worldwide, and she has juried, curated, and programmed for many exhibitions, film festivals, and conferences. Mona also designs projections and interactive media installations and has received two Helen Hayes Award nominations for her media design work for live performances. At the University of Virginia, Mona lectures and teaches courses on digital art, projection design, projections mapping, integrated interactive media, and immersive media. She is a faculty co-lead at the Karsh Institute’s Digital Technology for Democracy Lab. She was previously a faculty fellow at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) as well as the New College Curriculum. In 2023, she completed the semester-long leadership development program at UVA called Leadership in Academic Matters (LAM), which focuses on recognizing, supporting, and nurturing those with demonstrated leadership characteristics and future potential across various roles. Currently, Mona holds leadership roles: an elected member of the executive committee (2019-2025) and Chair of ACM SIGGRAPH (2023-2024), and a board member for the New Media Caucus.
Research topics
- Computer Science
- Artificial Intelligence
- Data Mining
- Political Science
- Computer Security
- Psychology
- Internet privacy
- Cognitive psychology
- Archaeology
- Epistemology
- Computer vision
- History
Selected publications
arXiv (Cornell University) · 2021
- Computer Science
- Artificial Intelligence
- Computer Science
Despite the ubiquity and proliferation of images and videos in online news\nenvironments, much of the existing research on misinformation and its\ncorrection is solely focused on textual misinformation, and little is known\nabout how ordinary users evaluate fake or manipulated images and the most\neffective ways to label and correct such falsities. We designed a visual\nforensic label of image authenticity, Picture-O-Meter, and tested the label's\nefficacy in relation to its source and placement in an experiment with 2440\nparticipants. Our findings demonstrate that, despite human beings' general\ninability to detect manipulated images on their own, image forensic labels are\nan effective tool for counteracting visual misinformation.
arXiv (Cornell University) · 2021 · 2 citations
- Computer Science
- Artificial Intelligence
- Computer Science
Despite the ubiquity and proliferation of images and videos in online news environments, much of the existing research on misinformation and its correction is solely focused on textual misinformation, and little is known about how ordinary users evaluate fake or manipulated images and the most effective ways to label and correct such falsities. We designed a visual forensic label of image authenticity, Picture-O-Meter, and tested the label's efficacy in relation to its source and placement in an experiment with 2440 participants. Our findings demonstrate that, despite human beings' general inability to detect manipulated images on their own, image forensic labels are an effective tool for counteracting visual misinformation.
2021 · 9 citations
- Computer Science
- Artificial Intelligence
- Computer Science
Despite the ubiquity of images and videos in online news environments, much of the existing research on misinformation and its correction is solely focused on textual misinformation, and little is known about how ordinary users evaluate fake or manipulated images and the most effective ways to label and correct such falsities. We designed a visual forensic label of image authenticity, Picture-O-Meter, and tested the label’s efficacy in relation to its source and placement in an experiment with 2440 participants. Our findings demonstrate that, despite human beings’ general inability to detect manipulated images on their own, image forensic labels are an effective tool for counteracting visual misinformation.
2018-04-20 · 34 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingThe growing ease with which digital images can be convincingly manipulated and widely distributed on the Internet makes viewers increasingly susceptible to visual misinformation and deception. In situations where ill-intentioned individuals seek to deliberately mislead and influence viewers through fake online images, the harmful consequences could be substantial. We describe an exploratory study of how individuals react, respond to, and evaluate the authenticity of images that accompany online stories in Internet-enabled communications channels. Our preliminary findings support the assertion that people perform poorly at detecting skillful image manipulation, and that they often fail to question the authenticity of images even when primed regarding image forgery through discussion. We found that viewers make credibility evaluation based mainly on non-image cues rather than the content depicted. Moreover, our study revealed that in cases where context leads to suspicion, viewers apply post-hoc analysis to support their suspicions regarding the authenticity of the image.
New Media & Society · 2018-09-24 · 186 citations
articleOpen accessFake or manipulated images propagated through the Web and social media have the capacity to deceive, emotionally distress, and influence public opinions and actions. Yet few studies have examined how individuals evaluate the authenticity of images that accompany online stories. This article details a 6-batch large-scale online experiment using Amazon Mechanical Turk that probes how people evaluate image credibility across online platforms. In each batch, participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 28 news-source mockups featuring a forged image, and they evaluated the credibility of the images based on several features. We found that participants’ Internet skills, photo-editing experience, and social media use were significant predictors of image credibility evaluation, while most social and heuristic cues of online credibility (e.g. source trustworthiness, bandwagon, intermediary trustworthiness) had no significant impact. Viewers’ attitude toward a depicted issue also positively influenced their credibility evaluation.
SSRN Electronic Journal · 2018-01-01 · 26 citations
articleOpen accessReview of Middle East Studies · 2018-04-01
article1st authorCorrespondingMohamed Zayani, Networked Publics and Digital Contention, The Politics of Everyday Life in Tunisia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Pp. 304. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9780190239770. - Volume 52 Issue 1
Selfies, Dance, and Performance: A Multimedia and Multidisciplinary Collaboration
Journal of Dance Education · 2017-07-03 · 5 citations
articleSenior authorThis article discusses a pedagogical and creative approach to designing a mixed-media, live dance performance. By involving undergraduate students in the process, the authors were able to examine the contemporary phenomenon of selfies and the effect of the “online self” and “mediated self” on dance performance. The performance combined the work of dance and digital media design faculty members, self-reflective contributions from students, a music composer, and a costume designer. Even the audience participated, as the students’ selfies and images of audience members taken by the dancers early in the performance were then also projected onto a media screen. Some of the choreographed movements were developed by student dancers following journaling and small group explorations of self and identity as seen in the selfies. Postperformance interviews revealed the value of complicating more traditional dance-making practices through role interdependence and of teaching the creative integration of multimedia in performance design.
Media and Communication · 2017-12-21 · 14 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingThis article examines the growing use of digital-networked images, specifically online self-portraits or “selfies”, as deliberate and personal acts of political expression and the ways in which meaning evolves and expands from their presence on the Internet. To understand the role of digital-networked images as a site for engaging in a personal and connective “visual” action that leads to formation of transient communities, the author analyzes the nude self-portrait of the young Egyptian woman Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, which during the Egyptian uprisings in 2011 drew attention across social media. As an object of analysis this image is a prime example of the use of digital-networked images in temporally intentional distribution, and as an instance of political enactment unique to this era. This article also explains the concept of participatory narratives as an ongoing process of meaning formation in the digital-networked image, shaped by the fluidity of the multiple and immediate textual narratives, visual derivatives, re-appropriation, and remixes contributed by other interested viewers. The online circulation of digital-networked images in fact culminates in a flow of ever-changing and overarching narratives, broadening the contextual scope around which images are traditionally viewed.
The Communication Review · 2017-07-03 · 54 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingDigital-networked images of torture, abuse, and humiliation are increasingly used by nonstate agents to form online communities based upon prejudice and bigotry and/or to propagate violent vigilante justice. This article discusses the circulation, impact, and permanence of digital-networked images that perpetuate nonstate hegemony and function as mechanisms for exercising power, disciplinary force, and social control reminiscent of Foucauldian theories of power-knowledge and governmentality.
Frequent coauthors
- 9 shared
James F. O’Brien
International Computer Science Institute
- 7 shared
Cuihua Shen
University of California, Davis
- 2 shared
Wenjing Pan
iRepertoire (United States)
- 2 shared
Yining Z. Malloch
University of California, Davis
- 1 shared
Grace A Bassett
- 1 shared
Cuihua Shen
- 1 shared
Grace A. Benefield
University of California, Davis
- 1 shared
Kim Brooks Mata
University of Virginia
Awards & honors
- Ruffin Distinguished Artist-in-Residence
- GSAS Graduate Curatorial Programs
- Helen Hayes Award nominations for media design work
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