Do (Microtargeted) Deepfakes Have Real Effects on Political Attitudes?

• In Event: Deepfakes in the 2020 Presidential Election: Detecting New Attempts at Deception

Abstract

Deepfakes are perceived as a powerful form of disinformation. Though many studies have focused on detecting deepfakes, few have measured their effects on political attitudes, and none have studied microtargeting techniques as an amplifier. We argue that microtargeting techniques can amplify the effects of deepfakes, by enabling malicious political actors to tailor deepfakes to susceptibilities of the receiver. We report an experiment (N = 278), where we use a self-constructed deepfake (video and audio). We find that attitudes toward the depicted politician are significantly lower after seeing the deepfake, but the attitudes toward the politician’s party remain similar to the control condition. When we zoom in on the microtargeted group, we see that both the attitudes toward the politician and the attitudes toward his party score significantly lower than the control condition, suggesting that microtargeting techniques can indeed amplify the effects of a deepfake, but for a much smaller subgroup than expected.

Authors

• Claes H. de Vreese, University of Amsterdam

• Tom Dobber, Universiteit van Amsterdam