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Futures in Research

Generative AI and online political talk: a research agenda for human-machine political communication

Shuning Lu
Maggie Zhang
North Dakota State University
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Generative artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT, can be used to create new content, including text, imagery, audio, and synthetic data. Despite the wide discussion about its applications in education, healthcare, business, and other sectors, its benefits and challenges in political communication have not been fully touched upon. This working group will discuss the relevance of generative AI in political communication. Using online political talk as a point of departure, we outline a research agenda built around three key aspects of human-machine political communication: (a) the instrumental dimension through which generative AI could be utilized as a tool to nudge and facilitate online political talk, (b) the interactive dimension through which generative AI is an interactant in online political discussions, and (c) the (infra)structure dimension in which generative AI, as a societal actor, transforms and revolutionalizes the online discussion space.