Bora Sezer’s “Deepfakes as a Socially Constructed Technology” article was published as a chapter in the Extended Reality and Media book by Nobel Publications
URL:
https://www.nobelyayin.com/genisletilmis-gerceklik-ve-medya-xr-teknolojileri-18824.html
Abstract:
The science and technology studies (STS) field has generated many perspectives for analyzing
the social shaping of technology. Among these structural theories is most notably Trevor Pinch
and Wiebe Bijker’s work known as the social construction of technology (SCOT). This
framework’s approach has helped to create diverse and rich academic research in its field.
Although SCOT has enormous contributions regarding the comprehension of technological
developments, it can be premised that most of the existing core studies have solely focused on
tangible and material technological artifacts (Klein & Kleinman, 2002) such as bakelite and
fluorescent lighting (Bijker, 1987, 1995), work on ultracentrifuges (Elzen’s, 1986) and
investigation of the manufacture of steel (Misa, 1992). Moreover, The newfound structures of
digital Information technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, cloud
platforms and Virtual and Augmented Reality have remained untouched (Baalen et al.,2016).
These new ecosystems deserve to be put under the analytical lens of STS as well. Considering
the previous statements, this paper attempts to examine the deepfake technology as a case study
through Pinch and Bijker’s theoretical framework of the social construction of technology. It
aims to analyze deepfakes as a socially constructed technology and intends to explain its
maturation phases through the manifestation of interests belonging to relevant social groups. For
this, the paper will proceed in the followıng order; Fist it will give a general overview of SCOT’s
theoretical framework, following this, it will sketch a generic outline of the recent Deepfake
technology. Finally, the paper will analyze Deepfakes as a socially constructed technology by
using the proposed framework.