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Epistemic Forensics

LG203
Module 2: The Epistemology of Digital Artefacts
3 Lessons

Moving beyond traditional chain-of-custody models to account for algorithmic manipulation, generative placeholders and metadata falsification.

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The Epistemology of Digital Artefacts

1

What Digital Artefacts Prove and Cannot Prove

Understand the epistemological limits of digital evidence: what authentic records genuinely demonstrate in legal reasoning, and where veridical bias creates dangerous blind spots.

25 min
Theory
Examples
Quiz
Critical Questions
2

Chain of Custody, Provenance and the Limits of Metadata

You will understand how traditional chain-of-custody doctrine fails to capture the vulnerabilities of digital evidence to algorithmic manipulation, why metadata provides false security, and how to construct a provenance narrative that survives cross-examination.

25 min
Theory
Examples
Quiz
Critical Questions
3

Generative Placeholders, Edits and Composites: Degrees of Manipulation

You will understand how to distinguish between degrees of digital manipulation, from minor edits to synthetic generation, and apply these distinctions in evaluating evidentiary weight and authenticity challenges.

25 min
Theory
Examples
Quiz
Critical Questions