By: Julie Essex
The writing I read this week was by Vaccari and Chadwick, the topic was Deepfakes and disinformation. This topic is very interesting when it comes to AI technology and social media interactions. In this article's research they used two videos of Deepfakes, one from India and one from the USA. The researchers wanted to see the correlation between disinformation and how people view videos like this online. With recent political disparities and a lot of mistrust with “Fake News”, the researchers created a study to see how people reacted to these Deepfake videos.
I thought this article was very interesting because I sort of remember seeing the Jordan Peele video where he pretends to be President Obama. I found the video to be quite trippy and it did look very real at first but once you saw the reveal, it was easier to point out that it was not a real video. I think it is fascinating that videos like these can be created but it is also scary at the same time. I have also seen Deepfakes on TikTok of old paintings or pictures of people's past family members. It does give some creative freedom for people but I definitely think this new technology could be used for misleading or spreading false information. With technology advancing so quickly, I do not think there are enough people online using social media to care if information or what is being presented is real or not. I think more internet users need to be educated in how to see or fact check if the information that is being presented is true or not. People like things that are quick and easy so I believe this online knowledge might be very hard to teach many people.
Knowing that the older generation uses facebook a lot compared to younger generations, I have seen first hand what many people on Facebook do not see to fact check before sharing something they have seen online. Many people in the last few years love to share things they have seen to give out their opinion even if they have not checked their sources. This seems especially prevalent during political voting times and the presidential race. I think when people in power are spreading misinformation and calling things they do not like as “Fake News” it furthers people’s distrust in social media news.
I do find it very ironic that all my life growing up, I have always been taught that you can not trust everything you see on the internet but older adults. It seems like these older adults have somewhat forgotten about this rule when it came to political events that were happening and when people in charge were Tweeting out information that could or could not be true. I think this topic of if Deepfakes will continue to help the spread of disinformation can go very deep down a rabbit hole. There are many layers to this topic but I think that this could be a good thing having this new technology but if used for the wrong idea or message it could really cause an uproar in some people who do see things on the internet as face value.
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