Very excited to have my essay, ‘Spectre, Deepfakes and the Contamination of Contamination‘, included in this fabulous new issue of C/O magazine, edited by Nuria Kramer.

Synthetic media, which has long existed in aural and photographic forms was, even then, only one element of the manipulation equation. New tactics and technologies, whether psychologically micro-targeted advertising, professional political manipulators, or toxic social media bubbles have had the potential to impact cultural and political spheres in powerfully negative ways, and were largely absent from the debate at the time of Spectre’s release. Yet with the Brexit referendum close at hand, and the 2020 US election only months off, the stakes were high. The weaponization of targeted disinformation in social media had already been shown to have impacted prior elections (the US presidential election in 2016, for example) as well as public debate on critically important issues like climate change…

Spectre, Deepfakes and the Contamination of Contamination. Howe, Daniel C. Edited by Nuria Kramer. C/O Magazine, Vienna, 2021-08-01.