Deepfakes on Twitter: Which Actors Control Their Spread?
Open accessAbstract
The term deepfake was first used in a Reddit post in 2017 to refer to videos manipulated using artificial intelligence techniques and since then it is becoming easier to create such fake videos. A recent investigation by the cybersecurity company Deeptrace in September 2019 indicated that the number of what is known as fake videos had doubled in the last nine months and that most were pornographic videos used as revenge to harm many women. The report also highlighted the potential of this technology to be used in political campaigns such as in Gabon and Malaysia. In this sense, the phenomenon of deepfake has become a concern for governments because it poses a short-term threat not only to politics, but also for fraud or cyberbullying. The starting point of this research was Twitter’s announcement of a change in its protocols to fight fake news and deepfakes. We have used the Social Network Analysis technique, with visualization as a key component, to analyze the conversation on Twitter about the deepfake phenomenon. NodeXL was used to identify main actors and the network of connections between all these accounts. In addition, the semantic networks of the tweets were analyzed to discover hidden patterns of meaning. The results show that half of the actors who function as bridges in the interactions that shape the network are journalists and media, which is a sign of the concern that this sophisticated form of manipulation generates in this collective.
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Academic research on digital misinformation on social media has just lately started, despite significant efforts of huge tech corporations.
“Academic research on digital misinformation on social media has just lately started, despite the significant efforts of huge tech corporations (Pérez Dasilva et al. 2021).”
From Deepfakes: current and future trends (2024) · cites this paper as Pérez Dasilva et al. 2021
Political deepfakes have the most public attention due to their capacity to produce instability within and across countries.
“Furthermore, despite the fact that most deepfakes that circulate on the web are pornographic in nature, political deepfakes are the ones that have the most public attention due to their capacity to produce instability in a variety of contexts, including both within and across countries.”
From Deepfakes: current and future trends (2024) · cites this paper as Pérez Dasilva et al. 2021
Journalists and media organizations make up half of those participating in disseminating deep fakes.
“The fact that journalists and media organizations make up half of those participating in disseminating deep fakes is evidence of the anxiety that this sophisticated kind of deception incites among this group, according to the results.”
From Deepfakes: current and future trends (2024) · cites this paper as Pérez Dasilva et al. 2021
Most deepfakes that circulate on the web are pornographic in nature.
“Furthermore, despite the fact that most deepfakes that circulate on the web are pornographic in nature, political deepfakes are the ones that have the most public attention due to their capacity to produce instability in a variety of contexts, including both within and across countries.”
From Deepfakes: current and future trends (2024) · cites this paper as Pérez Dasilva et al. 2021
Cites
Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news
Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G. (2018) · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · doi:10.1037/xge0000465 · Cited by 1,268 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Although deepfakes have become a topic of debate, academic research has only just recently begun addressing digital disinformation on social media (Anderson, 2018), which can be dangerous to the public sphere given the potential to create states of false opinion (Pennycook, Cannon, & Rand, 2018).”
BackgroundVaccari, C., & Chadwick, A. (2020) · Social Media + Society · doi:10.1177/2056305120903408 · Cited by 978 · see citing works
Combating Deepfake Videos Using Blockchain and Smart Contracts
Hasan, H. R., & Salah, K. (2019) · IEEE Access · doi:10.1109/access.2019.2905689 · Cited by 339 · see citing works
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Deepfakes: current and future trends
Gambín, Á. F., Yazidi, A., Vasilakos, A., Haugerud, H., & Djenouri, Y. (2024) · Artificial Intelligence Review · doi:10.1007/s10462-023-10679-x · Cited by 145 · see citing works
Gamage, D., Ghasiya, P., Bonagiri, V., Whiting, M. E., & Sasahara, K. (2022) · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3491102.3517446 · Cited by 79 · see citing works
Deepfakes and Society: What Lies Ahead?
Gamage, D., Chen, J., Ghasiya, P., & Sasahara, K. (2022) · Studies in Autonomic, Data-driven and Industrial Computing · doi:10.1007/978-981-19-1524-6_1 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
- Authors
- Pérez Dasilva, J., Meso Ayerdi, K., & Mendiguren Galdospin, T.
- ORCID
- Pérez Dasilva, Jesús
- Venue
- Media and Communication
- Publisher
- Cogitatio
- Published
- 2021-03-03
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 301-312
- ISSN
- 2183-2439 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3133915455
- Cited by
- 38
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 2
- FWCI
- 8.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Media and Communication (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Communities in ADDI (University of the Basque Country) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Communities in ADDI (Universidad del Pais Vasco) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Social Science Open Access Repository (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) (submittedVersion)
- Hispana (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (RTI2018-095775-B-C41, RTI2018)
- Eusko Jaurlaritza (IT1112-16)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Network Analysis Techniques
- Keywords
- deepfakes, fake videos, Twitter, fake news, social media manipulation, semantic networks, cyberbullying, political campaigns
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