Luca Livolsi, Winner of the CoBS 2024 Student CSR Competition at Warwick Business School, tackles the question of political polarization through the lens of AI and social media and contends that the phenomenon will persist as long as convenience prevails over critical thinking

How rogue AI and social media are widening the ideological rift by Luca Livolsi.

The phrase “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see” is often attributed to a short story by Edgar Allan Poe in which the head of a mental health institution gives advice to a young patient as a note of caution about the dangers of the outside world.

At a time when increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) generated content has become nearly impossible to distinguish even for the trained eye of experts, we should feel compelled to doubt about the “half of what we see” that we have traditionally trusted. Although disinformation campaigns and the willingness of political and social actors to influence social dynamics have always existed, the impetuous emergence of AI tools has made it easier than ever to sow division.

New techniques that allow personalised disinformation and the ease to reach specific audiences through social media have made it easier than ever to feed half-baked truths and outright lies to people, leading to a palpable social and political polarisation among the public. At a time when distinguishing truth from fallacy is increasingly difficult, a new societal model of trench politics is emerging, where what we choose to believe is dependent on whether it fits our political discourse. An almost paranoiac lack of trust and unwillingness to compromise by political actors and supporters has dangerous consequences on the ability to keep a democratic coexistence and compromise on the big issues where consensus is paramount.

Clickbait, social media bots, and AI misuse

1. Social media disinformation

The presence of misleading information aimed at sowing political division came hand in hand with the inception of social media platforms. Nonetheless, the deception approaches used today are far more refined and targeted than they used to be. The presence of “Spamming Bots”, which all social media users have come across at some point, is the main culprit in aggravating uncivil discussions and polarisation (Cantini et al., 2022), particularly in the context of electoral events. While political division has always been part of our societal reality, a widening ideological rift is emerging enabled by cheap, fast, targeted campaigns that can be orchestrated through social media anonymously without scrutiny or repercussions.

2. Changes in media consumption

A key factor in understanding the drivers of misinformation and polarisation is the emerging new media consumption patterns, which have significantly changed in the last two decades. According to an Ofcom (2023) survey, 83% of 16-24-year-olds favour online news sources, and 71% also declare to prefer social media as a primary source of information. Meanwhile, the 55+ population heavily relies on newspapers and television, reflecting a fundamental change in where we put our trust to stay informed.

An over reliance on non-verified outlets and social media posts not only increases the amount of disinformation received but also exposes users to targeted messaging. Micro-targeting potential voters based on online behavioural and cookie-compiled data has allowed political campaigns to expose specific audiences to tailored, often inaccurate, information through social media, which researchers at the London School of Economics have strongly correlated with a polarising trajectory of moderate and extreme voters (Levy and Razin, 2020).

3. Lack of comprehensive legislation on AI and social media

What has become apparent is the inability of social media platforms to exert sufficient content moderation on their sites to root out misleading information. Big platforms like YouTube, for example, were taken advantage of to spread COVID-19 misinformation, bypassing their guidelines and content moderation directives (Tokojima Machado et al., 2022). Although media companies have a fiduciary duty to promote healthy and trustworthy discourse, flagging, contextualising, and eliminating fake news and fabrications is a gargantuan task. As such, there is a need for government intervention to establish rules and restrictions on misleading content, while safeguarding freedom of information and global access to platforms.

4. AI content deepfakes

Artificially generated content poses unique challenges to moderators and citizens who wish to stay informed. AI-generated content is becoming the preferred tool for influencing elections, swaying voter preference and polarising the electorate (Ray, 2021). The ability of AI to generate swaths of content and inundate social media platforms together with the capacity to stylistically emulate traditional, trusted news outlets is a lethal combination.

The spread of AI to generate political discontent and antagonise individuals is making it harder to discern reality and facts (Linden, 2024). While the European Union has approved landmark legislation on AI development and content regulation with the Artificial Intelligence Act to address these concerns, experts from the Social Europe Fund suggest the scope of the law and wording of the text can leave room for loopholes that bypass the established guardrails  (Ponce Del Castillo, 2023).

AI and Social media: It is (not) that simple

Putting the blame for political polarisation squarely on social media and online outlets would lead to not addressing a fundamental aspect of the problem. Individuals with fringe or extreme ideas have always existed throughout history, yet their visibility and influence have been limited since the dissemination of ideas and opinions was controlled by traditional media outlets and other gatekeepers of information. Prior to the advent of the internet, radical discourses simply lacked a platform, and the spread of false rhetoric and incendiary political statements was very limited.

While the democratisation of access to information and the creation of free and open platforms has been a net positive from a civil liberties standpoint, the spread of misinformation, particularly from political figures, creates a permission structure for others to act similarly, eroding deeply rooted societal consensus on the importance of being truthful and honest. Addressing social media-driven polarisation without actively educating the public on civic engagement would set up the conditions to trip over the same stone twice.

Beyond Us vs. Them: The erosion of civility and consensus

Increased political differences and confrontation are not inherently bad as they can promote citizen’s interest and engagement in the political process. However, it can impede consensus building, erode trust, and prevent people from coming together around the most basic aspects of community life. Moreover, the deepening of ideological divisions within society has been shown to adversely affect both mental and physical health (Fraser et al., 2022).

Political polarisation exploits traditionally non-partisan matters, as seen with the spread of COVID-related misinformation. In the US, almost one-third of conservative voters reported not wanting to get vaccinated (Alemi and Lee, 2023), with half of them believing the jabs contained microchips (Bolsen and Palm, 2022). The partisan taint of issues that should be handled by the health authorities negatively impacted the effectiveness of herd immunity (Zimmerman et al., 2023). The right/left polarisation against vaccines was definitely not solely an American concept, as most of Europe experienced the same phenomenon (Backhaus et al., 2023). The instrumentalization of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign wore out the trust in institutions and exacerbated the distance along ideological lines.

Social media-driven political polarisation promotes an ‘us vs them’ identity politics, which aggravates the unwillingness to care for the community, promotes racism and gives rise to hate speech. In the United States alone, the political and ideological rift is having concrete consequences, from a steep rise in political violence (Kleinfeld, 2021) to a decline in willingness to marry someone from an opposing party or ideology (Wang, 2020).

A perniciously polarised society is more prone to suffer an erosion of peaceful coexistence and according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, persistent polarisation compromises legislative action, erodes institutional behaviour and incentivises the pursuit of spurious personal gains by political actors (Mccoy and Press, 2022).

Note: An ideological consistency index estimated for voters on the basis of 10 questions on economic, social and moral issues. The index ranges from -10 (fully liberal) to +10 (fully conservative) and the distribution for the whole of the sample is taken.

2024 will be an arena for democracy, a year filled with significant political events (Ewe, 2024), including the US and UK general elections, the EU parliamentary elections and the Indian general election, a country in which more than 969 million people will be casting a ballot. The threat of AI-generated extreme content, which is expected to be a major component of the political discourse targeted to voters this electoral year (Adami, 2024) promotes a vision of political opponents as a threat and opting for political alternatives suddenly becomes inconceivable, undermining the trustworthiness of the political process.

Re-engaging the disillusioned

There are some green roots, still, that give reason for optimism. Younger, educated social platform users are less likely to trust online misinformation (Soetekouw and Angelopoulos, 2022), signalling that digital natives have a better understanding of the media environment online and can spot false statements compared to older generations. However, that same year researchers found that almost half (41%) of teenagers aged 16-19 could not tell the difference between true and false medical information (Greškovičová et al., 2022).

This highlights the importance of media literacy and provides a strong argument in favour of a more comprehensive approach towards fact-checking being integrated into school programs. Crucially, according to the European Parliament (2022), 15-24-year-olds trust public TV and printer press more than twice as much as social media outlets (40% and 17% respectively), although overall trust in media is the lowest among any age group.

A growing political division and an increasingly polarised civil discourse have led young people to be the most disengaged (Zhang, 2022) and disillusioned (Foa et al., 2020) group of voters. While the data provide no reason for optimism, we can treat this situation as an opportunity to galvanise younger generations to participate in the political process in a landscape they understand better than any other age group.

This undertaking would need to rely on two principles. Firstly, decreasing the dependency on social media platforms as a means of political education and discussion, as cross-partisan discussion can reduce political polarisation (De Jong, 2024) and promote consensus. And secondly, promoting healthy scepticism online.

The inconvenient truth is that political polarisation will persist as long as convenience prevails over critical thinking. Uncritically taking online information at face value, without careful consideration and contrasting sources, simply echoes pre-existing biases and opens the door to further division.

Sources: For a full list of sources and references used in this article click here.

Useful links:

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• Read a related article: Political polarization and the erosion of American solidarity
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