Digital Transformations: Polarization, media manipulation, and resistance

Digital Transformations: Polarization, media manipulation, and resistance

EXTENDED ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS

Fake News, Deep Fake Videos, Social Bots, Closed platforms, Open platforms, Misinformation, Disinformation, Fact-checking, Media Literacy, Artificial Intelligence

1. Introduction:

This extended abstract attempts to answer the following questions: what social media users should do about the spread of Fake News and Deep Fake Videos? Well, this extended abstract explores the spread of Fake News and Deep Fake Videos through social media platforms and exemplifies the role of users. Essentially, it infers the relevance of Artificial Intelligence and a fact-checking culture in the process of mitigating this peril.

To what extent are Social Media Platforms accountable for the amount of fake news and an artificial polarization purposely created? How has digital media manipulation been involved in the recent elections in these countries and impacted political participation in these countries? What forms of resistance come from these digital contexts? Has social media been fueling political polarization? How polarization impacts political conversation in these contexts?

Some Social Media Platforms, for instance, Facebook give freedom of speech a legal status that goes beyond what many Democratic Sovereign Constitutions permit (Schwarz & Biddle, 2019). It is alleged that the platform has continuously allowed Extremists to remain afloat. In response, Facebook has argued that white supremacists’ organizations do not violate their “community standards”. This means that Neo-Nazis inhabit the same virtual space just like other groups (Dearden, 2019). Though, when freedom of speech is fueled by hate speech, misinformation and disinformation go viral!

This paper focuses on the Disinformation as Fake News; mainly as Deep Fake Videos. On the Internet, disinformation –a type of informational disorder– is dubbed as Fake News. Although, after the 2016 American Presidential Election, it was found –through the Cambridge Analytica (C.A.) leak and scandal– that such company had a highly immoral modus operandi of micro-targeting selected American states with #BlackLivesMatter and in neighboring states #WhiteLivesMatter, thus, intentionally creating an artificially polarized society (Heawood, 2018). Also, driving away real and important campaign issues afar and gravitating debate from trivial and dismal issues to conspiracy theories as well (Stuart, 2016)

2. Cambridge Analytica Case Study & Relevance:

The C.A. scandal led to its’ formal demise: the company shut down in June 2018. Having stated this, it is important to note that a joint venture was created between C.A. and a Brazilian political publishing company: C.A.-Ponte, born in March 2018; but lasted for a short time (Marreiro, 2017). Another interesting anecdote is that C.A. CEO Alexander Nix did not aid in the 2018 Bolsonaro Brazilian Presidential Campaign. Nix did not want to support someone with so many extreme views (Pollo, 2018). Though, truth be said: Nix did not have a problem coordinating the entire Brexit referendum in 2015. In 2016, he supported an alt-right figurehead –Donald Trump– in the United States presidential elections and won.

Cambridge Analytica also bombarded social media outlets with disinformation, that is, fake news. Although some of the news was completely and utterly preposterous, some Americans who did not have the same level of education that few still have did not incur in fact-check tabloid-like articles (Petri, 2016).

3. 2020 and emergence of Deep Fake:

In 2020, it is highly probable that a newer and more sophisticated version of Fake News will emerge, known as the Deep Fake (also known as DeepFake) videos. While Fake News may be perceived as static, Deep Fake news is dynamic. Fake News heavily relies on the repetition of the same false message. Newscasters may read it from teleprompters, and social bots may be programmed to post it many times. Also, some gullible people may replicate partially or completely such bogus disinformation in a damaging fashion. Yet, the structural form, in most cases, even the number of characters remains identical. To some degree, this is what makes fake news resemble a photocopied photo, making it static. In creating a deep fake video, an ill-intended person or organization needs to copy/paste someone’s face, or simply face-swap. To bake a more sophisticated face-swapping video, it is necessary to use Computer Generated Imagery and Graphics. Although AI technology may be cheap, to deliver a natural effect that is misleading to a majority of the audience is still challenging (Durall, 2019). For example, to properly synchronize lip movements to the victim’s voice in a deep fake video is very hard. This is the main reason why, until now, deep fake videos only last a few seconds and not several minutes. That does not mean that they cannot be leveraged in 2020 and beyond.

4. Do we really need a more segregated social media platform?:

It seems that social media is building into its’ own clusters. The previous version of Facebook only permitted users to post content with only their friends, only for them to see and also to make it public. Through the creation of Facebook groups: supporters of the alt-right movement arose including Extremists. Currently, Twitter is testing a new design through its’ twttr prototype app, to also recreate a Reddit tree-branch experience (Perez, 2019). The problem with making open platforms into closed platforms where it only brings people with similar opinions creates a segregated Internet (Chesney & Keats, 2018). Although the Internet was developed to bring people all over the world together, creating different segregated closed groups: alt-right movement –which seems in 2020 to dominate part Western World (from Hungary, Brazil, Chile, to U.SA.)– is gerrymandering our democratic procedures through electioneering endeavors worldwide. Cambridge Analytica was the first big storm; other cases might follow. At the beginning of 2020, the probability of accessing even more sophisticated forms of fake news, namely Deep Fake Videos is very high.

In Brazil, the issue regarding resisting fake news is on another level of difficulty: for here closed social media platforms, most notably, the app WhatsApp (also owned by Facebook) is extremely popular. Through the evil combination of (i) Static Fake News, (ii) [Dynamic] Deep Fake Videos, (iii) Artificial Intelligence misuse, (iv) social bots exploitation with the clear objective of spamming fake news and (v) [as mentioned above] WhatsApp is a closed platform –people outside a WhatsApp group cannot see, reply or defy a false content– and therefore may cause much harm.

The spread of Fake News means a lot to the digital community and the overall stability of our democracies. The misuse of Artificial Intelligence and some computational power (becoming cheaper every year), the ill intentions of its’ creators; nowadays makes it is possible to face-swap a politician face (or anyone for that matter) and insert that public figure in, for exemplification alone, sexually demeaning scene (Fletcher, 2018). Albeit, deep fake videos may be used as an expression of art (Floridi, 2018); it is more likely that Deep Fake Videos will spread in closed WhatsApp groups very quickly and Facebook’s C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg will not be able to control it as he has said (Shead, 2020) because WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption.

5. Alternative routes of resistance:

Following this rationale, throughout the research of this paper, with the prevalence of alt-right, an alt-left or indie left social media platform is still inexistent on the web, and this is a real-world problem. The left are those who have socialist perspectives on others. They need to create a virtual space and rectify fake news, deep fakes and also inform the real facts. Hypothetically, the creation of an Open Social Media Platform with Public Fact-checked up-voted posts will improve the situation. Doing so, it is possible to encourage human users and not social bots to debate on real electoral issues; from an objectified point of view. This is the main alternative to shift the course of our derailing democracies.

The silver lining is that Artificial Intelligence has the potential to neutralize the dissemination of false messages. The sovereign States have been keen and cautious with the development of Artificial Intelligence Technologies. In 2018 and 2019, relevant legal task forces assembled to debate and have proposed guidelines for Artificial Intelligence Ethics, which include the High-level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence – Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI by the European Commission (EC, 2019) and the Recommendation of the Council on Artificial Intelligence by (OECD, 2019). These assemblies are representative of how different countries are coming together in an attempt to safeguard A.I. Compliance. The same initiative has been followed up by renowned I.T. Companies through the publication of AI at Google: Our Principles (Pichai, 2018) and Microsoft AI Principles (Microsoft, 2019).

For 2020 and years to come, although there is a high probability of deep fake videos emerging, hopefully, new legal frameworks will try to contain the proliferation of this newly mutated form of fake news. However, in the end, everyone should do their part to maintain the virtual space free of fake news. The users must denounce fake news through refusing the manipulation of organizations and states, conducted through disinformation in social media, no matter the personal cost (Fingas, 2018).