Date of Award

7-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Social Media Marketing

First Advisor

Andrew Smith

Second Advisor

Chajuana Trawick

Third Advisor

Merve YanarGurce

Abstract

This project seeks to answer the question of what media authenticity is, as it relates to different forms of popular media such as social media and content creators, content consumers that also actively post on social media, Reality Television and also touching base on how Artificial Intelligence has infiltrated the lives of many. Aside from discussing academia that has been published on this topic prior, my project will additionally include a quick guideline for being able to detect inauthentic media, and give quick points and recommendations for people that have no active media literacy training of any kind that can be utilized decades down the line even with unprecedented times.

Research Highlights

  • The Problem: Media consumers lack standardized media literacy training to evaluate and identify authentic content within a digital ecosystem increasingly influenced by social media, reality television, and artificial intelligence.

  • The Method: The research utilized a constructivist mixed-methods design consisting of a thematic analysis of social media platforms, semi-structured interviews with 15 participants, and an online survey distributed to a sample of 15 to 20 respondents.

  • Qualitative Finding: Analysis of participant responses revealed that evaluations of media authenticity depend on multiple recurring themes, including transparency; relatability; consistency; brand skepticism; artificial intelligence disclosure; emotional authenticity; a preference for smaller content creators; the contrast between performance and reality.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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