History was always a weapon in modern politics. Those who wanted to shape the future knew that it was important to take control over the interpretation of the past. Manipulating visual material emotionally telling the story of historic moments is an approach that is old as the tradition of writing history itself. But does the new quantity and quality of deep faked history in the world wide web lead us into times where fact and fiction cannot be separated from each other anymore, when telling stories of our past? For our March episode we met Jason Steinhauer, founder of the History Communication Institute, to discuss the new quality of manipulating historical narratives in times of deep fake technology.

Information about our guest

About Jason Steinhauer

The History Communication Institute

Material used and discussed in the episode

Jason Steinhauer, History Disrupted: How Social Media & the World Wide Web Have Changed the Past, Palgrave Macmillan: Cham 2022.

Chloe Xiang, People Are Creating Records of Fake Historical Events Using AI, in: VICE, March 27, 2023.

Jacob N Shapiro & Chris Mattmann, A.I. Is Coming for the Past, Too, in: The New York Times, January 28, 2024.

Tackling the misinformation epidemic with “In Event of Moon Disaster”, in: MIT Open Learning, July 20, 2020.

Daniel Immerwahr, What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes, in: The New Yorker, November 13, 2023.

Fake History Hunt on X.

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