Assignment 2 — The Tell

Analyse a provided sample of real or synthetic media and write the case for your verdict, naming the specific evidence it rests on.

Due: 3 October 2027 · Weight: 30%

The brief#

You are handed a sample. Decide whether it’s real, and write the case a sceptical reader would actually need to be convinced.

Assignment 2 flips the semester’s viewpoint from forger to detector: rather than making a convincing fake, you’re handed one (or a genuine sample — you’re not told which in advance) and asked to reach and defend a verdict. The brief deliberately rewards the same honesty week 10’s guest lecture modelled: a confident wrong verdict is worse than an honest “probably, but here’s the one thing I couldn’t rule out.” Detection tooling gets you partway there; naming what the tooling can’t tell you is the rest of the mark.

What you submit#

A written case of 400–700 words: your verdict, the specific evidence for it (quote a stroke-dynamics measurement, a spectral artefact, a stylometric observation — whatever your assigned sample’s material actually supports), and an explicit statement of where your confidence is lowest. No separate artefact beyond the write-up is required — the sample itself is provided in the studio, not submitted back.