Eighth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The rapidly improving accessibility and deceptive qualities of AI Deepfakes facilitate a new dimension of political manipulation in democratic elections like the upcoming presidential race in the United States in 2024..Successful templates like the infamous “Willie Horton” (1988) and “Swift Boat” (2004) attack commercials can be emotionally supercharged to become viral videos on social media. Sophisticated digital technology and techniques allow for precision-targeted ads to reach decisive swing voters in battleground states which elected President Trump with 0.07 percent and President Biden with 0.03 percent of all votes cast as their respective margins of victory. Habermas’s recent essay on a new structural transformation of the public sphere points to the deceptive power of “fake news” as a key factor for the loss of trust in political opinion- and will-formation among the democratic electorate. This paper argues that civic literacy to combat political manipulation of citizens can only be safeguarded by public service media dedicated to an ethical and responsible use of artificial intelligence in the political public sphere. Conversely, the digital authoritarianism that staged the election victory of a dictator’s son in the Philippines in 2022 and will, in all likelihood, do the same for the Indian prime minister in 2024, rests on the state control of most media and on the persecution of independent investigative journalists like the Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, head of the online news site “Rappler.” in the Philippines. :

Presenters

Michael Hofmann
Professor, School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, USA, Florida, United States