Deepfakes or Synthetic Media? The Effect of Euphemisms for Labeling Technology on Risk and Benefit Perceptions

IF 5.5 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2025-07-24 DOI:10.1177/20563051251350975

Adrian Rauchfleisch, Daniel Vogler, Gabriele de Seta

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The language used in public debates and in the news can influence how citizens perceive the risks and benefits of technology. While framing effects on technology perception are well understood, few studies have focused on the effects of specific terms used to describe technology. We analyze how the terms deepfake and synthetic media affect risk and benefit perceptions across application fields. Using Switzerland as a case, our manual content analysis ( n = 380 news articles) reveals a focus on risks in news coverage of deepfakes with minimal use of the term synthetic media. We then tested the effects of the terms on risk and benefit perceptions in a preregistered survey experiment (n = 736 participants). Term choice does not change perceived risks, but “synthetic media” significantly increases perceived benefits across application fields. As a theoretical contribution, we link our findings to the concept of euphemism, proposing that term choice should align with application fields to reflect the risks and benefits of technology. Overall, our study shows that the terms we use to label technology matter, especially for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.

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深度造假还是合成媒体？标签技术委婉语对风险和利益认知的影响

在公共辩论和新闻中使用的语言可以影响公民如何看待技术的风险和利益。虽然框架效应对技术感知的影响已经被很好地理解，但很少有研究关注用于描述技术的特定术语的影响。我们分析了深度假媒体和合成媒体这两个术语如何影响各个应用领域的风险和收益认知。以瑞士为例，我们的人工内容分析（n = 380篇新闻文章）揭示了深度造假新闻报道的风险，而合成媒体这一术语的使用最少。然后，我们在预注册的调查实验中测试了这些术语对风险和利益感知的影响（n = 736名参与者）。术语选择不会改变感知风险，但“合成介质”显著增加了跨应用领域的感知收益。作为一个理论贡献，我们将我们的发现与委婉语的概念联系起来，提出术语的选择应该与应用领域保持一致，以反映技术的风险和收益。总的来说，我们的研究表明，我们用来标记技术的术语很重要，尤其是对于人工智能等新兴技术。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

期刊介绍： Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.