Deepfakes in Discourse: The Impact of Information Priming on Truth Bias and Deception Detection

Technology has been a constant throughline during my college years, with a growing interest for artificial intelligence and generative systems.

For my senior thesis, I took a deep dive into the social implications of AI-modified videos, and looked at how we, as viewers, respond to them – especially when it comes to deepfakes. In particular, I explored how positive and negative priming shape a viewer’s ability to detect (or fall for) deepfake content. My research leaned into recent theories on information priming and truth bias to unpack why some of us spot the fakes while others don’t.

At the heart of it, my goal was simple: to understand how we can stay one step ahead of digital deception. I wanted to offer a fresh take on media literacy and ways around how we can better equip ourselves to combat sophisticated misinformation.