Dr Merrick Burrow discusses Cottingley Fairies hoax on Radio 4
The University of Huddersfield’s Dr Merrick Burrow has discussed the enduring fascination with the Cottingley Fairies hoax, and modern parallels with deepfake images, on BBC Radio 4’s The Long View.
Cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths fooled the world when, in 1917, they took photos by a beck near the family home in Cottingley, near Bradford, which appeared to show them playing with fairies.
Millions, including Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, were taken in and the cousins only admitted to faking the photos in 1983.
Dr Burrow, Subject Leader for Communications and Humanities, has been researching and discussing the hoax for many years. His appearance on The Long View, alongside presenter Jonathan Freedland and BBC disinformation specialist Marianna Spring, sees him reflect on the hoax’s impact at the time with parallels with how current technology and AI can concoct images and other content to suit a viewpoint.
“The programme looks at an issue in contemporary life or politics, but through the lens of some sort of historical precedent,” says Dr Burrow. “In this episode we look at the sorts of questions about entrenched positions and polarisation of opinion that the Cottingley Fairies raised, and which are occurring again now.
Dr Merrick Burrow
Subject Leader for Communications and Humanities
“In deepfakes we have a new kind of technology that can produce a seemingly authentic representation of reality, but which can also be convincingly manipulated."
"Elsie and Frances used cameras to do something similar over 100 years ago, persuading people they were looking at a different kind of reality. Both photography and deepfakes have the capacity to undermine confidence in our own ability to tell truth from fraud and invention.
“The Cottingley Fairies tend to be remembered because of Conan Doyle's involvement, especially the frisson of pleasure people get at the idea of two girls from a backwater pulling the wool over the eyes of the creator of Sherlock Holmes. There's an underdog element to it that really cuts through in the way people remember it.
"But there is also another side of it, in which Doyle’s authority and celebrity amplified the deception, transforming it from a family prank into a global cause célèbre. There are striking similarities between this and the way deepfake technology has evolved in recent years from novelty filters on social media to the fuel for online conspiracy theories.”