Radical Right-Wing Political Deepfakes Can Successfully Delegitimize Targeted Political Actors: Evidence From Three-wave Experiments in the US and The Netherlands

Abstract

Political deepfakes potentially undermine democracy by amplifying socio-political divides in hyper-realistic manners. As an important next step in understanding the political consequences of deepfakes, this article reports on the longer-term effects of deepfakes across two different political settings: The US and the Netherlands. We conducted three-wave pre-registered experiments spanning a full week in which we exposed participants in the US and the Netherlands to realistic political deepfakes. We found that, in both political settings, exposure to deepfakes lowered support for the targeted political actor. This effect was strongest for people initially supporting the attacked politician. Although deepfakes had a delegitimizing impact, they were rated as substantially less credible than authentic videos. Although fact-checks were able to lower the credibility of deepfakes, the delegitimizing impact of deepfakes was resilient to corrections. These findings highlight the continued influence of corrected deepfakes on political beliefs.