From Detection to Understanding: Multi-Turn Reasoning for Video Misinformation Analysis

Zhi Zeng, Jiaying Wu, Minnan Luo, Di Zhang, Yifei Yang, Xiangzheng Kong, Herun Wan, Zihan Ma


Abstract
Video misinformation detection is often approached as a binary veracity classification problem, overlooking the complex reasoning required to explain how and why content misleads. Existing benchmarks fail to capture the diversity of manipulation strategies, such as AI-generated edits and out-of-context manipulation, and do not evaluate whether models can provide process-level justifications for their judgments. We address these limitations with MisVideoQA, a multi-turn benchmark designed to assess comprehensive understanding and reasoning in video misinformation analysis. MisVideoQA covers 12 fine-grained deception categories and evaluates models along six dimensions, progressing from perceptual attribution to intent and persuasion analysis. Recognizing that standard MLLMs struggle to sustain such structured, evidence-based deduction, we propose MisAgent, a Delphi-inspired multi-agent framework in which specialized agents collaboratively integrate multimodal cues with external evidence. Experimental results show that state-of-the-art multimodal large language models perform poorly on MisVideoQA, while MisAgent consistently improves reasoning accuracy and explanation quality. Together, our benchmark and framework establish a unified foundation for reliable, interpretable, and evidence-grounded video misinformation analysis.
Anthology ID:
2026.acl-long.1716
Volume:
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Month:
July
Year:
2026
Address:
San Diego, California, United States
Editors:
Maria Liakata, Viviane P. Moreira, Jiajun Zhang, David Jurgens
Venue:
ACL
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
37009–37027
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl/2026.acl-long.1716/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Zhi Zeng, Jiaying Wu, Minnan Luo, Di Zhang, Yifei Yang, Xiangzheng Kong, Herun Wan, and Zihan Ma. 2026. From Detection to Understanding: Multi-Turn Reasoning for Video Misinformation Analysis. In Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 37009–37027, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
From Detection to Understanding: Multi-Turn Reasoning for Video Misinformation Analysis (Zeng et al., ACL 2026)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl/2026.acl-long.1716.pdf
Checklist:
 2026.acl-long.1716.checklist.pdf