False failures, real distrust: the impact of an infrastructure failure deepfake on government trust - PMC
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Empirical study examining how deepfakes of infrastructure failures undermine government trust, with implications for AI safety concerning synthetic media's capacity to manipulate public perception and democratic institutions.
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This study examines how exposure to deepfakes depicting infrastructure failures affects public trust in government. Using experimental data from the United States and Singapore, the researchers found that viewing deepfakes of localized infrastructure failures significantly increases distrust in government. The study explores whether cognitive reflection and education levels serve as protective factors against the persuasive effects of such deepfakes. The findings highlight deepfakes as a novel and potent threat to institutional trust, potentially more effective than traditional disinformation due to their heightened perceived authenticity.
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| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| AI Trust Cascade Failure | Risk | 55.0 |
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False failures, real distrust: the impact of an infrastructure failure deepfake on government trust - PMC
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Front Psychol . 2025 May 23;16:1574840. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1574840
False failures, real distrust: the impact of an infrastructure failure deepfake on government trust
Saifuddin Ahmed
Saifuddin Ahmed
1 Wee Kim Wee School for Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
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1, * , Muhammad Masood
Muhammad Masood
1 Wee Kim Wee School for Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
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1 , Adeline Wei Ting Bee
Adeline Wei Ting Bee
1 Wee Kim Wee School for Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
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1 , Kei Ichikawa
Kei Ichikawa
2 Computational Social Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
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2
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1 Wee Kim Wee School for Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
2 Computational Social Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
Edited by: Marco Biella, University of Basel, Switzerland
Reviewed by: Ruth Shillair, Michigan State University, United States
Althea Frisanco, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
✉ *Correspondence: Saifuddin Ahmed sahmed@ntu.edu.sg
Received 2025 Feb 11; Accepted 2025 Apr 29; Collection date 2025.
Copyright © 2025 Ahmed, Masood, Bee and Ichikawa.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use
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