TY - JOUR
T1 - Anticipating and addressing the ethical implications of deepfakes in the context of elections
AU - Diakopoulos, Nicholas
AU - Johnson, Deborah
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Norwegian Research Council’s SAMANSVAR Program in the context of the VisMedia project at the University of Bergen.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
PY - 2021/7
Y1 - 2021/7
N2 - New media synthesis technologies are rapidly advancing and becoming more accessible, allowing users to make video and audio clips (i.e. deepfakes) of individuals doing and saying things they never did or said. Deepfakes have significant implications for the integrity of many social domains including that of elections. Focusing on the 2020 US presidential election and using an anticipatory approach, this article examines the ethical issues raised by deepfakes and discusses strategies for addressing these issues. Eight hypothetical scenarios are developed and used as the basis for this analysis, which identifies harms to voters who view deepfakes, candidates and campaigns that are the subjects of deepfakes, and threats to electoral integrity. Four potential forms of intervention are discussed with respect to multi-stakeholder responsibility for addressing harms, including education and media literacy, subject defense, verification, and publicity moderation.
AB - New media synthesis technologies are rapidly advancing and becoming more accessible, allowing users to make video and audio clips (i.e. deepfakes) of individuals doing and saying things they never did or said. Deepfakes have significant implications for the integrity of many social domains including that of elections. Focusing on the 2020 US presidential election and using an anticipatory approach, this article examines the ethical issues raised by deepfakes and discusses strategies for addressing these issues. Eight hypothetical scenarios are developed and used as the basis for this analysis, which identifies harms to voters who view deepfakes, candidates and campaigns that are the subjects of deepfakes, and threats to electoral integrity. Four potential forms of intervention are discussed with respect to multi-stakeholder responsibility for addressing harms, including education and media literacy, subject defense, verification, and publicity moderation.
KW - Anticipatory ethics
KW - deepfakes
KW - electoral integrity
KW - synthetic media
KW - technology ethics
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U2 - 10.1177/1461444820925811
DO - 10.1177/1461444820925811
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85085911442
VL - 23
SP - 2072
EP - 2098
JO - New Media and Society
JF - New Media and Society
SN - 1461-4448
IS - 7
ER -