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Cited by 67Misinformation and Its ImpactsSocial Media and PoliticsMedia Influence and Politics

You Won’t Believe What They Just Said! The Effects of Political Deepfakes Embedded as Vox Populi on Social Media

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Hameleers, Michael, van der Meer, Toni G. L. A., Dobber, Tom·2022·Social Media + Society
DOI 10.1177/20563051221116346
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Abstract

Disinformation has been regarded as a key threat to democracy. Yet, we know little about the effects of different modalities of disinformation, or the impact of disinformation disseminated through (inauthentic) social media accounts of ordinary citizens. To test the effects of different forms of disinformation and their embedding, we conducted an experimental study in the Netherlands ( N = 1,244). In this experiment, we investigated the effects of disinformation (contrasted to both similar and dissimilar authentic political speeches), the role of modality (textual manipulation versus a deepfake), and the disinformation’s embedding on social media (absent, endorsed or discredited by an (in)authentic citizen). Our main findings indicate that deepfakes are less credible than authentic news on the same topic. Deepfakes are not more persuasive than textual disinformation. Although we did find that disinformation has effects on the perceived credibility and source evaluations of people who tend to agree with the stance of the disinformation’s arguments, our findings suggest that the strong societal concerns on deepfakes’ destabilizing impact on democracy are not completely justified.

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  • Social media favor the proliferation of populism, disinformation and polarization.

    “Dada la centralidad de las redes sociales en la comunicación política contemporánea, y la literatura que sustenta que éstas favorecen la proliferación de populismo, desinformación y polarización (Colussi et al., 2023;Hameleers et al., 2022), se recopilaron y analizaron publicaciones de Twitter y Facebook.”

    From Populismo, desinformación y polarización política en la comunicación en redes sociales de los presidentes populistas latinoamericanos (2024) · cites this paper as Hameleers et al., 2022

    The paper states that social media can amplify disinformation (Disinformation and Deepfakes, p. 3). It also links the right-wing populist disinformation it studies to efforts to increase polarized divides (Disinformation’s Effects, p. 4), but does not establish the broader claim that social media foster the proliferation of populism and polarization generally. (LLM, conf=0.85)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • The deepfake video of the Dutch politician is not more persuasive than the text alone.

    “the previously mentioned deepfake video of the Dutch politician is not more persuasive than the text alone37.”

    From Human detection of political speech deepfakes across transcripts, audio, and video (2024) · cites this paper as [37]

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References 35 · Cited by 67

Research works printed but not linked: 24

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Authors
Hameleers, M., van der Meer, T. G. L. A., & Dobber, T.
Affiliations
  • University of Amsterdam (NL)
  • University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Corresponding author
Hameleers, Michael
ORCID
Venue
Social Media + Society
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2022-07
Volume
8
Issue
3
ISSN
2056-3051 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1177/20563051221116346
OpenAlex
W4293092224
Cited by
67
References
35
Citations by year
2026: 20 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 19 · 2023: 5
FWCI
16.91
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Social Media + Society (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
Keywords
political deepfakes, disinformation, social media, credibility, persuasion, source evaluation, political speeches, authenticity, democracy

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