Rewriting the stars: Surface tensions and gender troubles in the online media production of digital deepfakes

 Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Volume 27, Issue 4; https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565211029412

Autor: Christopher Holliday; Department of Liberal Arts, King’s College London, London, UK; christopher.holliday@kcl.ac.uk; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1261-5024. 

Keywords: digital; stardom; hollywood; performance; cinephilia; internet; computer; technology.

Abstract: This article examines a cross-section of viral Deepfake videos that utilise the recognisable physiognomies of Hollywood film stars to exhibit the representative possibilities of Deepfakes as a sophisticated technology of illusion. Created by a number of online video artists, these convincing ‘mash-ups’ playfully rewrite film history by retrofitting canonical cinema with new star performers, from Jim Carrey in The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) to Tom Cruise in American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000). The particular remixing of stardom in these videos can – as this article contends – be situated within the technological imaginary of ‘take two’ cinephilia, and the ‘technological performativity of digitally remastered sounds and images’ in an era of ‘the download, the file swap, [and] the sampling’ (Elsaesser 2005: 36–40). However, these ‘take two’ Deepfake cyberstars further aestheticize an entertaining surface tension between coherency and discontinuity, and in their modularity function as ‘puzzling’ cryptograms written increasingly in digital code. Fully representing the star-as-rhetorical digital asset, Deepfakes therefore make strange contemporary Hollywood’s many digitally mediated performances, while the reskinning of (cisgender white male) stars sharpens the ontology of gender as it is understood through discourses of performativity (Butler 1990; 2004). By identifying Deepfakes as a ‘take two’ undoing, this article frames their implications for the cultural politics of identity; Hollywood discourses of hegemonic masculinity; overlaps with non-normative subjectivities, ‘body narratives’ and ‘second skins’ (Prosser 1998); and how star-centred Deepfakes engage gender itself as a socio-techno phenomenon of fakery that is produced – and reproduced – over time.

Idioma: inglés. 

Publicación: 26 de julio del 2021. 

Volumen: Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Volume 27, Issue 4. 

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Introduction: Digital changes in Latin American cinemas

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2019 Vol. 28, No. 4, 493–502; https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2019.1638235

Autor: 

1. Cerdán, Josetxo; professor of Media Studies at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, a member of the research group TECMERIN and the current director of Filmoteca Espa~ nola, the Spanish national film archive; jcerdan@hum.uc3m.es; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6028-4189 
    
2. Fernández-Labayen, Miguel; associate professor and the director of the MA in Film and Video Preservation in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where he is also a member of the research group TECMERIN; mflabaye@hum.uc3m.es; http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8648-1970 

Keywords: Digital cinema, national cinemas, Latin American cinema, digital Latin American cinema, film circulation

Abstract: This article introduces the dossier of the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies devoted to the study of digital cinema in Latin America. First, the text addresses the lack of research on the history of digital cinema in Latin America. Then, it proposes a comprehensive analysis of the digital, in terms of film aesthetics, production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption. At the same time, it establishes a dual axis to account for the changes and continuities generated by digital technology in temporal and spatial terms, within both sub- and supra-national logics. In this way, it emphasises the need to understand digital cinema as connected with previous technological and cultural phenomena such as analogue cinema or magnetic video. It also acknowledges that digital cinema is an extension of several local and global economic and industrial processes that different countries have negotiated in diverse and, at times, antagonistic fashions. Lastly, the article presents the five articles included in this dossier, and a sixth, shorter piece that functions as a critical response to the arguments and points addressed by the contributors. 

Idioma: inglés.  

Publicación: 07 de mayo del 2020. 

Volumen: Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2019 Vol. 28, No. 4, 493–502. 

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The effects of five public information campaigns: The role of interpersonal communication

Communications 2020; Vol 45 issue 2; https://doi.org/10.1515/commun-2020-2089

Autor: 

1. Solovei, Adriana, Care and Public Health Research Institute CAPHRI, Department of Health Promotion, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands; a.solovei@maastrichtuniversity.nl; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4409-2309
2. Van den Putte, Bas; Amsterdam School of Communications Research ASCoR, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; S.J.H.M.vandenputte@uva.nl;  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3635-6880

Keywords: interpersonal communication; public information campaigns; media exposure effects.  

Abstract: For five Dutch public information campaigns, this study assessed whether interpersonal communication mediated the effects of exposure (to TV, radio, or online banners) on five persuasive outcomes: awareness, knowledge, attitude, intention, and self-reported behavior. Structural equation modeling was used to test 23 models relating exposure to one of these outcome variables. Few direct effects of media exposure were found (for online banners, TV, and radio in, respectively, one, four, and seven of the 23 models). In contrast, results revealed that interpersonal communication had direct effects on the outcomes in 17 of the 23 models. Moreover, indirect effects of media exposure via interpersonal communication were found for online banner, TV, and radio exposure in, respectively, eight, nine, and ten models. These results indicate that interpersonal communication plays an important role in explaining media exposure persuasive effects and should be taken into account in the development and evaluation of public information campaigns.

Idioma: Inglés

Publicación: 21 de marzo del 2020 

Volumen: Communications 2020; Vol 45 issue 2. 

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Carmen Curcó, Semántica. Una introducción al significado lingüístico en español. Estados Unidos, Routledge, 2021

Anuario de Letras. Lingüística y Filología, vol. XI, núm. 2, jul-dic, año 2023: 167-172. https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.adel.2023.11.2/00X27OS138

Autor: Moisés López Olea; Centro de Enseñanza para Extranjeros Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; mlopez@cepe.unam.mx; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1413-3299

Introducción: Alguien que se interesa en la lingüística encontrará necesaria la búsqueda de textos y obras especializadas en el proceso de su formación académica con la finalidad de lograr la comprensión de las complejidades implicadas en la descripción de una lengua. Quizás, al comenzar a estudiar lingüística no es común imaginar lo complejo que puede ser abordar una pregunta como ¿qué significa ‘perro’ y qué significa ‘pero’?, o ¿qué significa ‘el perro es cachorro, pero es blanco’? Para lo anterior, en las bibliotecas se pueden encontrar diversas opciones de libros sobre semántica, introductorios o de profundización, clásicos o muy recientes, la mayor parte de ellos en inglés (cf. Lyons, 1995; Saeed, 2015; Larson, 2022) o producidos en el medio editorial peninsular (cf. Carriazo Ruiz y Luna, 2021; Espinal, Macià, Mateu y Quer, 2019). Para algunos, esto puede implicar una doble complejidad: no solo hay que intentar comprender la teoría y la metodología del estudio semántico, sino también vencer la posible barrera del idioma y lidiar con ejemplos posiblemente inaccesibles para nuestra cultura. En todo caso, ¿se requiere un nuevo libro que nos presente una panorámica de las perspectivas de estudio lingüístico sobre el significado? Las siguientes razones apuntan a una respuesta afirmativa y es este nicho donde se coloca el libro que a continuación comento. 

Idioma: español.  

Publicación: tipo reseña

Volumen: Anuario de Letras. Lingüística y Filología, vol. XI, núm. 2, jul-dic, año 2023: 167-172. 

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Desórdenes informativos sobreexpuestos e infrainformados en la era de la posverdad

El profesional de la información, 2019, v. 28, n. 3. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2019.may.02

Autor: Del-Fresno-García, Miguel; Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) Madrid, España; 

Keywords: Desórdenes informativos, Posverdad, Desinformación, Noticias falsas, Hechos alternativos, Deepfakes, Desinformación corporativa, Guerra a la ciencia.

Abstract: Information disorders (misinformation, fakes news, alternative facts, post-truth, deepfakes, etc.) are intentional pro-ductions whose strategy is focused on the fabrication of doubt and false controversies in order to achieve economic or ideological benefits. Information disorders are all interrelated and depend, in a necessary way, on post-Internet techno-logies which have modified the very nature of collective interpersonal communication. Information disorders have their origin and basis in different causes that have facilitated their development, scope and unprecedented current impact as: a) the war on science from the corporate sphere, b) the crisis of the post Internet national and local media, c) the deve-lopment of technological platforms that have socialized the ability to publish and distribute content at low cost, d) the crisis of the experts with a consequent epistemic crisis, e) advances in psychology, that exploit the psychological bases of informative disorders through cognitive biases, and f) a significant change in the way of understanding and exercising power in the 21st century, such as the ability to establish the relations of definition of reality itself (Beck, 2017). This supposes a true will of authority on the reality and, in the practice, a will of ideological supremacy and a serious risk for the liberal democracies.

Resumen: Los desórdenes informativos (desinformación, fake news, hechos alternativos, posverdad, deepfakes, etc.) son produc-ciones intencionales cuya estrategia consiste en la fabricación de la duda y falsas controversias con el fin de conseguir beneficios económicos o ideológicos. Los desórdenes informativos están interrelacionados entre sí y dependen, de forma necesaria, de las tecnologías post Internet, lo que ha modificado la naturaleza misma de la comunicación inter-personal colectiva. Los desórdenes desinformativos tienen su origen y bases en distintas causas que han facilitado su de-sarrollo, alcance e impacto actual sin precedentes: a) la guerra contra la ciencia desde el ámbito corporativo, b) la crisis de los medios de comunicación nacionales y locales post Internet, c) el desarrollo de plataformas tecnológicas que han socializado la capacidad de publicar y distribuir contenidos a bajo coste, d) la crisis de los expertos con su consecuente crisis epistémica, e) los avances en psicología, para explotar las bases psicológicas de los desórdenes informativos, a través de diferentes sesgos cognitivos, y e) un cambio significativo en la forma de entender y ejercer el poder en el siglo XXI, como la capacidad de establecer las relaciones de definición (Beck, 2017) de la realidad misma. Los desórdenes in-formativos suponen una voluntad de autoridad sobre la realidad, en la práctica, una voluntad de supremacía ideológica, y un riesgo para las democracias liberales.

Idioma: español. 

Publicación: 09 de junio del 2019. 

Volumen: El profesional de la información, 2019, v. 28, n. 3. 

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