Another issue to be aware of in regard to the spread of mis- and disinformation is the manipulative editing of videos, audio, and images. Playing off the term deepfake — a related misinformation issue — the products of this kind of manipulative editing are often called cheapfakes. Whereas realistic deepfakes rely on artificial intelligence or other advanced technologies to fabricate or create media, cheapfakes edit existing content using basic editing software and require minimal time investment.
Often, the speed of a video is slowed down to make an individual sound impaired.
Sometimes disinformation creators will splice together two separate videos to change the narrative of an event.
Watch out for edited images. This could include anything from changing the design on a celebrity’s t-shirt to overlaying two images.
Captions provide context for videos and images. misleading captions can alter the meaning of the image or video.
Sometimes disinformation creators will show only segments of a video to reframe the context and misrepresent what occurred.
The use of altered images to change the narrative for an issue long predates the creation of Photoshop. In the early half of the 20th century, Joseph Stalin used altered images as a political weapon during his dictatorship of the Soviet Union. Stalin used these images as a means to erase his political enemies from the Soviet history books. To read more about this early misinformation campaign and see examples of the altered photographs, see Erin Blakemore's "How Photos Became a Weapon in Stalin’s Great Purge" on History.com.
This video, produced by the Washington Post, walks viewers through a variety of methods that can be used to manipulate videos or photos, such as misrepresentation, splicing, deepfakes, and much more.
This video is from the Washington Post.
For an example of a cheapfake, see the fact-check article from Snopes discussing a image of a lion receiving a CT scan which was Photoshoped to appear like the filming of the lion intro to MGM movies.
Image Source: "Does This Photo Show the MGM Lion During Filming?" | Dan Evon | Snopes
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