The Liar's Dividend: The Impact of Deepfakes and Fake News on Politician Support and Trust in Media

While previous work has addressed the direct effects of misinformation, we propose to study the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians ``crying wolf'' over fake news. We argue that strategic and false allegations that stories are fake news or deepfakes benefit politicians by helping them maintain support in the face of information damaging to their reputation. We posit that this concept, known as the ``liar's dividend'', works through two theoretical channels: by injecting informational uncertainty into the media environment, or by providing rhetorical cover.