(Dis)information Maximalism: A New Age of Politics

By Mihaela Pranjkovic-Kovac, Science and Technology

Photo: Haley Keener

In just the past few years, we have witnessed leaps and bounds in the realm of technological ability; it has advanced in ways many of us could never have imagined. One of these innovations has been the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI). It has become especially noteworthy with its increased presence on social media. AI is considered to have gone mainstream just two years ago (Associated Press 2023). This technology has become so proficient that when scrolling through social media one may no longer be able to discern whether or not a given piece of content was AI-generated. Such videos may now include a slew of comments trying to figure out whether what they just watched was real—it has gotten that good. This is bound to affect politics given that many people use social media: about 54% of American adults say that they at least sometimes consume the news through social media (Pew Research Center 2024). 

Politicians are not oblivious to this fact; I’m sure that many received the same social media ads of politicians seeking donations that I did this past election season. Social media has the ability to reach and catch the attention of many people, especially those who rely on it for their daily news. Politicians have found a new haven on social media as it has given them the ability to make use of new tools such as virality and accessibility to increase the outreach of their political platforms. AI has changed the nature of the same social media platforms that politicians are utilizing in a crucial way. It has changed the manner of politics and the political presence on social media by facilitating a surge of information and disinformation. This shift, in turn, has intensified social divisions and increased polarization, leaving both general masses and political actors to navigate a new political world.

Firstly, it is vital to outline how social media itself has led to an increase in political polarization before analyzing how AI has escalated the issue. In a report conducted by Brookings, the primary conclusion—drawn from more than 50 social science studies and over 40 interviews with a variety of academics, activists, experts on policy, and industry members—is that while social media platforms are not the sole catalyst for political polarization, they broaden the issue. The method through which social media intensifies polarization is by acting as a platform for political debate, “…intensifying political sectarianism” (Barrett et al. 2021). Importantly, social media algorithms tend to work on a popularity basis—this includes interacting with either posts positively because you agree with them or negatively because it aggravates you, fostering political sectors. In short, you see more of the people you agree with the most and more of the people you agree with the least. This alters the perceptions of politics and creates a new reality on social media that tends to be more extreme and polarized than in the real world. These implications are supported by a study which found that subjects who stopped using Facebook for a month reduced polarization of views on policy issues by a significant amount (Barrett et al. 2021).

Now, what role does AI play in further facilitating this issue? The problem is that AI has the ability to produce mass amounts of content, quicker than any person could come up with, that takes over the modern social media landscape used by so many people. Importantly, the content produced and posted on social media is not required to be true—platforms can spread as much disinformation and misinformation as users want to churn out. This undermines the principle of democratic representation because voters on social media platforms have a harder time deciphering whether what they are hearing about elected officials is correct, making it harder to hold them accountable in their next vote when constituents are unsure what is real and what is fake. On the other hand, social media is making it harder for elected officials to discern what their constituents truly want as it is also altering their perception (Kreps and Kriner 2023). Seeing misinformation or disinformation may also contribute to seeing the subjective “other” side in a manipulated, and more extreme, light; it is easy to see how this might contribute to polarization. Moreover, it is not just limited to the internal mechanism of a country. As a Senate Intelligence Committee report showed, Russian AI operatives posed as Americans and deliberately targeted social media tools to deceive millions of users in the United States—millions of potential voters. The goal of this disinformation campaign was to polarize Americans on a variety of social divisions and build covert support for Russia’s favored candidate for the 2016 United States election (Kreps and Kriner 2023). This is a clear exemplification of politics being affected by AI. 

Just as AI in social media can be used to spread mass amounts of disinformation and deceive voters to sway the ebb and flow of politics, it can also be used to spread mass amounts of information and educate voters to enhance the ebb and flow of politics. It truly comes down to the manner in which it is wielded. This dilemma presents a variety of questions, yet to be definitively answered, for political actors of all sorts. For the voter, it raises questions of the best way to navigate the new political and social media sphere. It’s not enough to be simply aware of the disinformation and how AI propagates it; one needs to understand how to spot disinformation and develop the habit of fact-checking on their own. This poses a challenge. As the average person likely may not have the time nor energy to check on their own, it may be easier to simply accept the disinformation as true. For the politician, it has become of the utmost importance to check the information they are spreading and make it clear what they stand for, monitor what is being spread about their personal or public life, and direct voters to official pages and studies. Being aware of the influence of AI and its ability to spread disinformation will be crucial for quick response times. For the government, adapting to the rapid advancements in AI and amplifying official voices may prove to be necessary. All in all, in this new era of politics—being influenced by the integrated presence of AI on heavily used social media platforms and facts becoming indistinguishable from disinformation—it is time to react actively to protect politics. With political changes having the ability to affect the lives of millions, we cannot afford fiction produced by AI to tear us further apart.

References

Associated Press. 2023. “2023 was the year AI went mainstream. It was also the year we started to panic about it.” EuroNews, December 27. https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/12/27/2023-was-the-year-ai-went-mainstream-it-was-also-the-year-we-started-to-panic-about-it. 

Barrett, Paul. Hendrix, Justin. Sims, Grant. 2021. “How tech platforms fuel U.S. political polarization and what government can do about it.” Brookings, September 27. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-tech-platforms-fuel-u-s-political-polarization-and-what-government-can-do-about-it/. 

Kreps, Sarah. Kriner, Doug. 2023. “How AI Threatens Democracy.” Journal of Democracy, October. https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/how-ai-threatens-democracy/. Liedke, Jacob and Christopher St. Aubin. 2024. “Social Media and News Fact Sheet.” Pew Research Center, September 17. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/social-media-and-news-fact-sheet/.