ABSTRACT

This paper investigates journalistic discourses on “deepfakes” as the future of fake news. We analyze journalistic discourses on deepfakes over an 18-month period from 1 January 2018, when a GoogleTrends search demonstrates that the term first began to circulate, to 1 July 2019, shortly after an altered video of Nancy Pelosi, the US Speaker of the House, circulated on social media. Based on a comprehensive thematic analysis of English-language news stories on the topic, drawn from Nexis UK, we suggest that journalistic responses to deepfakes reveal deeper anxieties both about the future of the information environment and journalism’s role within this environment. Concerns that the audiovisual nature of deepfakes makes them inherently more believable than previous fake news forms leads to worries over the impending weaponization of deepfakes by resource-rich “bad actors.” At stake is the trustworthiness of media content, and journalists’ role in providing verified content to the public. We argue that journalists conjure up speculative worst-case scenarios around deepfakes—what we refer to as “conjectured specifity” to highlight the vital importance of journalism as a bulwark against fabrication and a defender of truth.

摘要

本文调查了关于“深度造假”作为假新闻未来的新闻话语。我们分析了自 2018 年 1 月 1 日起 18 个月内关于深度造假的新闻话语，当时 GoogleTrends 搜索显示该术语首次开始流传，到 2019 年 7 月 1 日，即在美国众议院议长南希佩洛西的视频修改后不久，在社交媒体上流传。基于对来自 Nexis UK 的关于该主题的英语新闻报道的综合主题分析，我们建议新闻界对深度造假的反应​​揭示了对信息环境的未来和新闻业在该环境中的作用的更深层次的焦虑。对深度伪造的视听性质使它们本质上比以前的假新闻形式更可信的担忧导致人们担心资源丰富的“坏演员”即将对深度伪造进行武器化。关键在于媒体内容的可信度，以及记者在向公众提供经过验证的内容方面的作用。我们认为，记者会围绕深造假造出推测性的最坏情况——我们称之为“推测的特定性”，以强调新闻业作为防止捏造的堡垒和真理捍卫者的重要性。