CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Somogyi, Alice |
|---|---|
| Title | Are Deepfakes a Threat? Redefining Deepfake-AI Through Popular Culture and the Everyday |
| Summary | While deepfakes have gained momentum as a potentially dangerous technology, the current deepfake literature has largely discarded contributions of the everyday (wo)man. To bridge this gap, this thesis employs the theoretical lenses of popular culture in world politics and the everyday in International Relations (IR) for understanding the deepfake knowledge spectrum, that is by complementing dominant academic knowledge with everyday knowledge generated by “ordinary” people. It thus explores the forms of knowledge produced on Reddit—a social media platform that hosts an active deepfake community—about deepfakes and how they relate to dominant knowledge. In doing so this research aims to display everyday knowledge production by adopting innovative insights that shed light on the complex interplay between dominant and creative knowledge within the micro-level deepfake realm. Applying congruence and discourse analysis and using two case studies allowed us to retrieve marginalized perspectives and diverse knowledge production processes. We find that Reddit serves as a popular site where both dominant and alternative knowledge are (re)produced. Notably, some Reddit users generate novel insights by normalizing deepfakes, considering it an extension of normality, while others challenge dominant disourses through the adoption of progressive and regressive Foucauldian counter-conducts, or what we introduce as counter-knowledge. This exploratory thesis encourages a more holistic comprehension of this emerging AI phenomenon, while highlighting the need for further examination of deepfake knowledge production within everyday contexts. |
| Supervisor | Merlingen, Michael |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/somogyi_alice.pdf |
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