Graduation Year
2025
Date of Submission
12-2024
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE)
Reader 1
Andrew Sinclair
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2024 Camille C Doherty
Abstract
This thesis examines the dangers of deepfakes to democratic stability, emphasizing their capacity to pollute our information ecosystem and undermine trust in media. Beyond the immediate political harms from deepfake incidents, deepfakes are troubling for their impact on our collective relationship to media, truth, and one another. As exposure to deepfakes becomes more common, discerning fact from fiction will become increasingly difficult. Over time, this could foster widespread skepticism of all media and, worse, apathy toward truth itself. With eroded trust and shared truths, democracies risk losing epistemic security – the foundation for informed deliberation, decision-making, and accountability in democratic governance.
Positioning deepfakes within the broader context of disinformation, this thesis argues that deepfakes are novel for their audio and visual formats as well as the growing accessibility of tools for their creation and dissemination. The democratization of this technology amplifies its dangers, enabling bad actors to weaponize disinformation at an unprecedented scale. While this thesis does not purport to offer definitive solutions, it offers a nuanced framework to better understand and address the unique challenges posed by deepfakes.
Recommended Citation
Doherty, Camille, "The Danger of Deepfakes: Information Pollution and Epistemic Insecurity" (2025). CMC Senior Theses. 3750.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/3750
Included in
American Politics Commons, Philosophy of Science Commons, Social Influence and Political Communication Commons
