Synthetic Realities in Political Deepfake News: Exploring AI-Generated Disinformation Consumption

Recent concerns about disinformation have increasingly centered on AI-generated synthetic media like deepfakes. This study uses online experiments to examine how individuals process and evaluate political deepfake news, which characteristics predict their susceptibility, and the potential cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral effects after exposure. The findings reveal that embedding political deepfake videos in social media newsfeeds can easily deceive or cause uncertainty among news audiences. Political orientation, confirmation bias, and news literacy significantly affect audiences’ skepticism toward social media information, their perceived credibility of deepfake news, and their intention to engage with it. Moreover, familiarity with news issues fully mediates the relationship between news literacy and engagement with deepfake news. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed to highlight the critical issues posed by AI-generated disinformation, which has increasingly affected the creation, distribution, and consumption of media content.