Media Effects in Modern Neo-Information Society

The article proposes a systematization of the main media effects cultivated in the modern neo-information society, draws conclusions about their relationship and interdependence. Information overload, which produces information noise, becomes the cause of media effects. All sources of information noise are currently predominantly embedded in the field of the Internet, which, on the one hand, determines information liberalism, and on the other hand, as a result of the provision of illusory freedom, the overall effect of media manipulation increases. In turn, information noises give rise to such a process as information anomie. Pseudo-news precedents, differentiated into fake and post-truth, based on the motives of media controllers, are considered as manifestations of information noise. Media fraud is a radical form of post-truthization of the information agenda. The classical media effects are the spiral of silence, moral panics, information fatigue, narcotic dysfunction and compassion fatigue, which must be considered from an interdisciplinary perspective – both in the context of social sciences and natural sciences (in particular, medicine), since the influence of media on society and inspired media effects become more and more systemic, targeted, spreading to all spheres of social everyday life, unrecognized by consumers, as a result of which they often turn out to be beyond regulation and control.

Deepfakes, misinformation and disinformation and authenticity infrastructure responses: Impacts on frontline witnessing, distant witnessing, and civic journalism

Frontline witnessing and civic journalism are impacted by the rhetoric and the reality of misinformation and disinformation. This essay highlights key insights from activities of the human rights and civic journalism network WITNESS, as they seek to prepare for new forms of media manipulation, such as deepfakes, and to ensure that an emergent “authenticity infrastructure” is in place to respond to global needs for reliable information without creating additional harms. Based on global consultations on perceived threats and prioritized solutions, their efforts are primarily targeted towards synthetic media and deepfakes, which not only facilitate audiovisual falsification (including non-consensual sexual images) but also, by being embedded in societal dynamics of surveillance and civil society suppression, they challenge real footage and so undermine the credibility of civic media and frontline witnessing (also known as “liar’s dividend”). They do this within a global context where journalists and some distant witness investigators self-identify as lacking relevant skills and capacity, and face inequity in access to detection technologies. Within this context, “authenticity infrastructure” tracks media provenance, integrity, and manipulation from camera to edit to distribution, and so comes to provide “verification subsidies” that enable distant witnesses to properly interpret eye-witness footage. This “authenticity infrastructure” and related tools are rapidly moving from niche to mainstream in the form of initiatives the Content Authenticity Initiative and Coalition for Content Authenticity and Provenance, raising key questions about who participates in the production and dissemination of audiovisual information, under what circumstances and to which effect for whom. Provenance risks being weaponized unless key concerns are integrated into infrastructure proposals and implementation. Data may be used against vulnerable witnesses, or the absence of a trail, for legitimate privacy and technological access reasons, used to undermine credibility. Regulatory and extra-legal co-option are also a fear as securitized “fake news” laws proliferate. The investigation of both phenomena, deepfakes and emergent authenticity infrastructure(s), this paper argues, is important as it highlights the risks related both to the “information disorder” of deepfakes as they challenge the credibility and safety of frontline witnesses and to responses to such “disorder,” as they risk worsening inequities in access to tools for mitigation or increasing exposure to harms from technology infrastructure.

A Postmodern Cultural Study of Media Manipulation and Capital Market Expansion

Media manipulation is rampant in the present postmodern culture since people are constantly monitored by screens due to the advancement of technology. In the postmodern world, the media have become an inseparable part of everyday life, where there is hardly any scope to spend a single moment without the screen and media. Thus, the current researcher got the impetus to unravel the media's simulated world, which uses images, advertisements, and signs to expand global capitalism. The objective of the study is to explore inquisitively the power and influence of the media and the way these are used to manipulate people. This is a qualitative study that delves into media politics and media economy in an investigative way to uncover the covert targets of the media. The study's major finding is that the media play a vital role in attracting consumers and expanding world commercialism in today’s globalized world. Several modern and postmodern writings were extensively studied to scrutinize the manifold facets of media manipulation through different presentations of print and visual formats.

Theoretic Model of Adversaries and Media Manipulation: A Two-Period Extension

Two adversarial actors interact controversially. Early incomplete evidence emerges about which actor is at fault. In period 1 of a two-period game, two media organizations identify ideologically with each of the two actors who are the players exerting manipulation efforts to support the actor they represent. In period 2, the full evidence emerges. Again, the two players exert efforts to support their preferred actor. This paper illustrates the players’ strategic dilemmas for the typical event that actor 1 is considerably at fault based on the early evidence, and much less at fault based on the full evidence. The model assumes that exerting effort in period 1 implies reward or punishment in period 2 depending on whether the full evidence exceeds the early evidence. Twelve parameters in the model are varied individually relative to a benchmark. For example, the players’ efforts are inverse U shaped to an extent in which the actors they identify with are at fault in the two periods. Increasing the evidence ratio intensity causes lower efforts since the players become more unequally matched.

Huanlian, or changing faces: Deepfakes on Chinese digital media platforms

In China, deepfakes are commonly known as huanlian, which literally means “changing faces.” Huanlian content, including face-swapped images and video reenactments, has been circulating in China since at least 2018, at first through amateur users experimenting with machine learning models and then through the popularization of audiovisual synthesis technologies offered by digital platforms. Informed by a wealth of interdisciplinary research on media manipulation, this article aims at historicizing, contextualizing, and disaggregating huanlian in order to understand how synthetic media is domesticated in China. After briefly summarizing the global emergence of deepfakes and the local history of huanlian, I discuss three specific aspects of their development: the launch of the ZAO app in 2019 with its societal backlash and regulatory response; the commercialization of deepfakes across formal and informal markets; and the communities of practice emerging around audiovisual synthesis on platforms like Bilibili. Drawing on these three cases, the conclusion argues for the importance of situating specific applications of deep learning in their local contexts.