The Role of AI in Shaping Political Discourse on Social Media

Abstract

In the contemporary landscape of politics, social media functions as the primary venue of engagement. The algorithms of artificial intelligence (AI) systems curate political discourse, target advertising, moderate discussions, and place generative media within social media feeds at marginal costs approaching zero. However, the engagement-optimized closed systems distort content, create environments for unaccountable microtargeting, spread misinformation, erode trust in the political system, and undermine the legitimacy of elections. This research seeks to explain how AI on social media structures exposure, interpretation, and perceived legitimacy of political discourse, and identifies interventions that retain benefits while reducing harms. The analysis is based on secondary data situated in Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Sciences from 2020 to 2025. This study builds on peer-reviewed research articles as the foundation for assessing the AI-political communication functions, strategies and AI technology. Six functions of AI systems were articulated: algorithmic curation and ranking, political ad targeting and delivery optimization, automated moderation and labeling, cross-cutting design choices, context dependence, and generative AI synthetic and synthetic political content. In this context, the benefits of AI in political communication include improved relevance, accessibility, safety, and efficiency of political campaigns, while the harms involve narrowed cross-cutting exposure, high-arousal polarization, opaque segmented persuasion, uneven enforcement, and synthetic media that undermines integrity.