Erfassen eines sozial-medialen Stimmungsbild zu Deepfakes – Eine Auswertung der Youtube-Kommentarreaktion auf DeepTomCruise

  • Type:Bachelor
  • Supervisor:

    Dr. Andreas Lösch, Dr. Linda Nierling & Prof. Dr. Melanie Volkamer

  • Contact Person:

    Dr. Linda Nierling

  • Deepfake technology, a technology for manipulating video and audio files, is discussed with great concern in the scientific and political communities with regard to its current and future potential for misuse. Little is known about the extent to which political and scientific fears are reflected in the broader public discourse. After a basic introduction to deepfake technology and its social dimension, this paper will make a first attempt to capture a social-media sentiment picture on deepfakes. On the basis of a particularly popular deepfake - supposedly showing the actor Tom Cruise - sentiments, worries and fears of the audience confronted with it will be identified. The history of the video's creation as well as the online audience's reaction so far will be investigated through a qualitative as well as quantitative analysis of the corresponding YouTube comments. The qualitative analysis is carried out by evaluating the most liked comments, the quantitative investigation subjects the entirety of the comments to a word collocation analysis and visualizes the results. By means of the analyses, it was possible to capture an initial mood picture: The reaction of the audience to the investigated deepfake is largely negative, exceeds the discussion of the superficial video content and specifically addresses the technology behind it. The discussion connects to the scientific debate and names abuse potential and scenarios as well as social implications of deepfake technology. Analogous to the scientific debate, the opportunities offered by the technology and actual, current victims of pornographic deepfakes recede into the background in the audience's reaction.