Socially (de)constructing deepfakes: understanding socio-technical interests and concerns in deepfake media

Deepfake technology has emerged as a novel form of manipulation for images and videos and has increased the prevalence and realism of false video information online. While there have been some positive uses of deepfakes in translation and entertainment, the technology is often defined by two negative use cases: political misinformation and non-consensual sexual imagery. A further harm comes from the lack of faith in real videos as a consequence of the existence of comparatively accessible video manipulation. There has been little psychological research which aims to explore the harms of deepfake technology. I report five studies which use both qualitative methods (thematic and discursive analysis) and quantitative methods (psychometrics and experimental design) to study the harmful uses of deepfakes. The first three of these papers seek to understand how the various harms of deepfakes are constructed among scholars, the general public and victims of deepfake abuse through qualitative methods. These papers involved case studies that explore the impacts of deepfake misinformation during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the harmful role of deepfake abuse imagery. The final two papers seek to make a positive contribution to the psychological study of deepfake perpetrators by developing a psychometric measure to study deepfake abuse myth acceptance, and an intervention which aims to reduce perpetration. The thesis contributes a number of novel case studies on deepfake harms as well as a first-of-its-kind tailored measure and intervention targeting deepfake abuse. Another contribution is a critical understanding of the role of online identity in technology facilitated gendered violence and the need for social and psychological solutions to augment existing technological solutions. I also outline a number of possible future directions for the psychological study of the consequences of deepfake abuse imagery. These future directions include the potential for future research targeted towards different perpetrators of deepfake abuse and the need for improved deepfake education in schools.

Grantor dc:publisher

University College Cork

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Twomey, John

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Murphy, Gillian
• Linehan, Conor

• Deepfakes
• AI
• Interventions
• Psychology

Statement dc:rights

• © 2025, John Twomey.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10468/18856

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:cora.ucc.ie:10468/18856