Deepfakes and Higher Education: A Research Agenda and Scoping Review of Synthetic Media
It addresses the problem of deepfake impacts on higher education globally, proposing mitigation strategies and beneficial applications, but is incremental as it reviews existing literature without new empirical data.
This study conducted a scoping review of 182 publications to assess deepfakes in tertiary education, identifying trends in detection, malicious applications, and benefits, and proposed a research agenda for investigating risks and uses in higher education.
The availability of software which can produce convincing yet synthetic media poses both threats and benefits to tertiary education globally. While other forms of synthetic media exist, this study focuses on deepfakes, which are advanced Generative AI (GenAI) fakes of real people. This conceptual paper assesses the current literature on deepfakes across multiple disciplines by conducting an initial scoping review of 182 peer-reviewed publications. The review reveals three major trends: detection methods, malicious applications, and potential benefits, although no specific studies on deepfakes in the tertiary educational context were found. Following a discussion of these trends, this study applies the findings to postulate the major risks and potential mitigation strategies of deepfake technologies in higher education, as well as potential beneficial uses to aid the teaching and learning of both deepfakes and synthetic media. This culminates in the proposal of a research agenda to build a comprehensive, cross-cultural approach to investigate deepfakes in higher education.