Abstract
Political misinformation spreads rapidly through social media, undermining trust, dividing society, and disrupting individuals’ understanding of political events. Deepfakes are AI-generated synthetic media that typically manipulate or replace faces and voices to create highly realistic but often deceptive content. Although this technology has been used for entertainment, it is increasingly deployed to spread misinformation. The study of political deepfakes remains relatively new and underexplored. This study examines public responses to a viral deepfake of former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris featured in a campaign ad shared by Elon Musk on X (formerly Twitter). By using a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, this research analyzes replies to Musk’s post, which received over 130 million views, 242,000 retweets, and 57,000 comments. Comments will be collected using X API V2 for developers. The preliminary findings demonstrate that many users perceived the deepfake as authentic content. By analyzing how audiences interpret and respond to deepfakes in a political context, this study contributes to media literacy and offers insight into the broader implications of synthetic media on democratic discourse.
Presenters
Mina MomeniAssistant Professor, Communication Arts, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Deepfake, Artificial Intelligence, Misinformation, Synthetic Media, Twitter
