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Gendered and racialized perceptions of sexualised deepfake abuse in three nations: Victim-blame and the minimisation of harms across Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States
Fri, September 5, 2:00 to 3:15pm, Deree | Classrooms, DC 702Abstract
Sexualised deepfake abuse, a subset of image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), involves the creation of synthetic imagery depicting a person(s) in sexually explicit ways without their consent. Despite a growing body of literature on various forms of IBSA, little is known about public perceptions of sexualised deepfake abuse. Factors such as the fabricated nature of the imagery and the absence of physical access to victims may shape perceptions of harm and blame in unique ways. Moreover, these perceptions are likely influenced by victim and perceiver characteristics, such as gender and race, which must be understood from an intersectional and culturally-contextualised framework. In this three-nation, pre-registered experimental study (659 participants from Australia, 657 from the United Kingdom, and 806 from the United States), we manipulated the race and gender of victims of sexualised deepfake abuse to examine perceptions of victim harm and perpetrator blame. Specifically, we exposed participants to pre-tested, digitally-created, full-frontal nude images of white, East Asian, and Black men and women in a fully-between subjects design and used multiple questions to assess the extent to which 1) the victim was seen as harmed by the creation and sharing of the deepfake image, and 2) the victim and perpetrator were to blame for the creation and sharing of the deepfake. In this paper, we discuss the findings, specifically relating to gender and race as an influence on perceptions of harm and blame.