Deepfakes As A Threat To Democracy : Perceptions, Challenges, And Implications Of Deepfake Discourses In Democracies

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to examine in what ways the relationship between democracy and deepfakes is discussed by the governments of Austria and UK. To achieve this, concepts of critical theory, specifically those of the Frankfurt School, with a focus on scholars such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Anders, and Marcuse, will be employed. A qualitative content analysis will be conducted on text documents, including policy papers from both countries. Additionally, newspaper articles will be analysed to gain an overview of the discourse development in both countries. Austria and the UK are considered two highly developed European countries, and given the impact of Brexit, it is important to understand how the UK is developing without EU regulations. A coding scheme is provided for operationalization of the core theoretical concepts, and the tool ATLAS.ti will be used to analyse the collected documents. As discussion within society is crucial for shaping opinions in a democracy, a content analysis will provide insights into both the stated and unstated meanings. Key findings indicate that while both the UK and Austria perceive deepfakes as a threat to democracy, they adopt different approaches in terms of regulation and identifying the specific dangers posed by deepfakes.