Deepfake videos degrade political reputations even when viewers realize they are fake

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Deepfake videos degrade political reputations even when viewers realize they are fake

by<br>Karina Petrova

May 5, 2026

Reading Time: 4 mins read

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Artificial intelligence can be used to generate deceptive videos that damage a politician’s reputation, even when viewers suspect the footage is fake. A new study published in Communication Research found that these manipulated clips decrease support for targeted candidates. Standard fact-checking efforts reportedly fail to undo the total reputational harm.

Disinformation created using artificial intelligence is often regarded as a major threat to global elections. Technology now allows malicious actors to seamlessly replace a person’s face or clone their voice. These creations are commonly called deepfakes. Political operatives can use these tools to make opposing candidates appear to say outrageous or offensive things.

Michael Hameleers, a communication researcher at the University of Amsterdam, led a team to investigate how these videos influence the public. Hameleers and his colleagues Toni G. L. A. van der Meer, Marina Tulin, and Tom Dobber wanted to track voter reactions over time. They aimed to discover if these manipulated videos actually influence minds during an election cycle.

Visual information is known to heavily influence human perception. Because people are accustomed to believing their own eyes, video evidence often bypasses normal skepticism. The research team weighed this visual power against the brain’s tendency to detect inconsistencies. They wanted to know if a wildly uncharacteristic statement would override the visual proof of a realistic video.

Processing fluency is a psychological concept describing how easy information is to understand. When media is easy to consume, people tend to accept it more readily without critical thought. The researchers suspected that realistic video formats would prompt this mental shortcut, making the lies easier to digest. They wanted to measure if a smooth presentation could hide a blatant falsehood.

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The team conducted their tests across two contrasting political landscapes. The United States features a highly polarized two-party system that is historically vulnerable to right-wing disinformation. The Netherlands operates under a multiparty system with higher general trust in the press, offering a more resilient media environment.

The researchers recruited over 3,000 adults across both countries. They designed a three-part experiment that took place over a full week in 2021. Participants answered questions at the start, were contacted again two days later, and completed a final survey three days after that.

During the surveys, participants were randomly assigned to watch either a genuine political address or a manipulated video. In the United States, the altered video featured Representative Nancy Pelosi. The artificial audio made it sound as though she sympathized with the rioters who breached the United States Capitol, suggesting Americans need to fight to win their country back.

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In the Netherlands, the team selected a moderate Christian Democratic politician named Sybrand Buma. The manipulated footage showed him delivering an extremist, anti-immigrant monologue about protecting Dutch traditions from foreign influences. The messages were designed to completely contradict the established public personas of the two targets.

The project also tested potential defensive measures against digital deception. Some participants read a media literacy warning before watching the media. This introductory warning provided specific tips on how to question news sources and spot fabricated news items online.

Another group was shown a fact-check immediately after watching the video, which explicitly corrected the false claims. The correction messages offered point-by-point refutations of the statements made in the videos. These interventions mimicked the exact format used by professional journalism organizations.

Evaluating the results, the researchers found the audience largely saw through the deception. In both countries, participants rated the altered videos as far less believable than the genuine articles. The bizarre nature of the statements likely tipped viewers off that something was amiss with the footage.

Despite the structural differences between the two nations, the psychological trends remained remarkably consistent. Voters in the polarizing American system and the consensus-driven Dutch system reacted to the synthetic videos in nearly identical ways. The broad similarities...