@article{2025:godulla:ready_or_n,
title = {Ready or not, here I come. How synthetic media challenge epistemic institutions},
year = {2025},
note = {This editorial examines how synthetic media and deepfakes unsettle the
epistemic foundations of contemporary public communication. We outline
how rapidly advancing generative technologies erode long-standing
assumptions about the authenticity of visual and audiovisual content
and challenge the institutional capacities of journalism, science,
politics, and the arts to maintain credibility and public trust. The
contributions to this Special Issue demonstrate these dynamics across
different national contexts and communicative domains, highlighting
how synthetic media transform political campaigning, newsroom
practices, audience cognition and strategies of verification. The
resulting picture is one of accelerating technological complexity
confronting comparatively slow-moving epistemic institutions. We
therefore argue for a coordinated, interdisciplinary research agenda
that addresses challenges in media reception and effects, political
communication, journalism studies, visual communication, media
education, media ethics, media law, and communication history. Such an
agenda is essential for safeguarding the integrity of shared knowledge
in an increasingly synthetic information environment.},
journal = {SCM Studies in Communication and Media},
pages = {471--484},
author = {Godulla, Alexander and Hoffmann, Christian Pieter},
volume = {14},
number = {4}
}