An average Joe, a laptop, and a dream: Assessing the potency of homemade political deepfakes

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dc.contributor.authorMurphy, Gillianen
dc.contributor.authorChing, Didieren
dc.contributor.authorMeehan, Eoghanen
dc.contributor.authorTwomey, Johnen
dc.contributor.authorBolger, Aaronen
dc.contributor.authorLinehan, Conoren
dc.contributor.funderResearch Irelanden
dc.contributor.funderEuropean Regional Development Funden
dc.date.accessioned2025-04-24T15:49:53Z
dc.date.available2025-04-24T15:49:53Z
dc.date.issued2025en
dc.description.abstractAcademic and media commentary suggests that deepfake videos are problematic because they are both more easily created and more potent than previous forms of misinformation. Surprisingly, there is little research that experimentally tests these claims. In this study, we tasked a first-year undergraduate student with quickly creating political deepfakes using easily available online tools. We experimentally compared the effectiveness of misinformation delivered through those deepfake videos against misinformation delivered through text and synthetic audio format (N = 443). Deepfakes were effective at planting false memories for fabricated political scandals and, in some cases, reduced reported voting intention by up to 20%. However, they were not consistently more effective than simple text. In a follow-up study (N = 300), we confirmed that we effectively debriefed participants and caused no lasting measurable changes to their beliefs or memories. We encourage further critical study of the novel properties of deepfake technology. en
dc.description.sponsorshipResearch Ireland (13/RC/2094_2)en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionPublished Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.articleide70061en
dc.identifier.citationMurphy, G., Ching, D., Meehan, E., Twomey, J., Bolger, A. and Linehan, C. (2025) 'An Average Joe, a laptop, and a dream: assessing the potency of homemade political deepfakes', Applied Cognitive Psychology, 39(2), p.e70061. DOI: 10.1002/acp.70061en
dc.identifier.doi10.1002/acp.70061en
dc.identifier.issn8884080en
dc.identifier.issued2
dc.identifier.journaltitleApplied Cognitive Psychologyen
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/17325
dc.identifier.volume39
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherJohn Wiley and Sons Ltden
dc.relation.project13/RC/2094_2en
dc.rights© 2025, the Author(s). Applied Cognitive Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work isproperly cited.en
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectDeepfakeen
dc.subjectFalse memoryen
dc.subjectMisinformationen
dc.subjectPolitical misinformationen
dc.titleAn average Joe, a laptop, and a dream: Assessing the potency of homemade political deepfakesen
dc.typeArticle (peer reviewed)en
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