"Prominent voices worry that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) will negatively impact elections worldwide and trigger a misinformation apocalypse. A recurrent fear is that GenAI will make it easier to influence voters and facilitate the creation and dissemination of potent mis- and disinformation. We argue that despite the incredible capabilities of GenAI systems, their influence on election outcomes has been overestimated. Looking back at 2024, the predicted outsized effects of GenAI did not happen and were overshadowed by traditional sources of influence. We review current evidence on the impact of GenAI in the 2024 elections and identify several reasons why the impact of GenAI on elections has been overblown. These include the inherent challenges of mass persuasion, the complexity of media effects and people’s interaction with technology, the difficulty of reaching target audiences, and the limited effectiveness of AI-driven microtargeting in political campaigns. Additionally, we argue that the socioeconomic, cultural, and personal factors that shape voting behavior outweigh the influence of AI-generated content. We further analyze the bifurcated discourse on GenAI’s role in elections, framing it as part of the ongoing “cycle of technology panics.” While acknowledging AI’s risks, such as amplifying social inequalities, we argue that focusing on AI distracts from more structural threats to elections and democracy, including voter disenfranchisement and attacks on election integrity. The paper calls for a recalibration of the narratives around AI and elections, proposing a nuanced approach that considers AI within broader sociopolitical contexts."

https://knightcolumbia.org/content/dont-panic-yet-assessing-the-evidence-and-discourse-around-generative-ai-and-elections

#AI #GenerativeAI #Disinformation #Elections #Politics #Misinformation #MassPersuasion #Microtargeting #MediaEffects

"In 1974 the concept of the ‘Werther Effect’ was coined by David Philipps, who suggested that reporting on high profile suicides - such as a celebrity or one blamed on a novel - can cause a spike of copycat suicides. Notably this is about reports of real world suicides, not fictional ones.

Assuming Philipps theory is correct, the panicked reporting on ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ could have exacerbated any uptick in youth suicides - many of which may well have been wrongly blamed on the novel, reported as such and lead to more coverage and potentially more copycats.

Although even ‘the Werther Effect’ could be just another simplistic answer to a complex issue: youth suicide - and scapegoating media - real or fictional, a distraction from real mitigations."

https://newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/the-1774-novel-blamed-for-youth-suicide

#Literature #History #Goethe #Germany #MediaPanics #MediaEffects

New research on #AlternativeMedia and #Populism: With Ruben Bach and João Areal (@unimannheim), I studied the impact of alternative news consumption on political views during the 2021 German federal election campaign. We find only limited evidence for attitudinal change caused by alt news use, but a stable tendency towards the populist radical right among its users.

Check out our findings here: https://osf.io/g96w7/

#PoliticalCommunication #MediaEffects @communicationscholars @commodon

«Video games do harm!» shouts the angry mob of parents, teachers, and apparently pediatricians too. But is it true? As the Bard, Calvin's dad, Weight Watchers, and even Bon Jovi say: too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. 🧵👇

#VideoGames #MythBuster #Education #ProSocialBehavior #RolePlaying #GameAddiction #Science #PositiveImpact #HealthyGaming #GameStudies #Gamification #QualityOfLife #MediaEffects #DigitalWorld #ViolenceInGames #GameIndustry #MentalHealth #EduGames

En route pour #Lyon to join #IAMCR2023.

Tomorrow, I'll be presenting joint work with Maria Grub & Peter Vorderer on #Learning and #IllusionOfKnowing as outcomes of #SocialMedia #News exposure.

Join the #PolComm #MediaEffects panel at 2pm in Amphi3.

@IAMCR @communicationscholars @commodon

I love home makeover TV shows. Now research indicates they make us sad, and makes our homes boring (because we feel compelled to opt for neutrals and “the goal is to create a place that is inoffensive and could appeal to many.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2023/07/07/hgtv-makes-homes-boring-sad
#makeover #HGTV #MediaEffects

In other words, targeted ads can have large, significant effects on people’s understandings of their social identities. That’s important!
#mediaeffects #mediastudies #commodon #politicalscience #advertising #politicalcommunication

I'm slowly getting used to the fediverse, so it's time for an #introduction: I am a professor at #ucla, formerly at #umich and #mcgill. My research is focused on #communication and #politicalscience, particularly #politicalcommunication #politicalbehavior and #politicalpsych I'm especially interested in #mediaeffects, accuracy in #media coverage #negativity and the #negativitybias, and #representation.

Reviewing an article that uses focus groups but: a. is informed only by quantitative studies, b. uses focus groups as a sum of individual interviews (rather than a construction of social discourses) and c. is dominated by a positivist #MediaEffects model. #Qualitative methods (and, more importantly, non positivist epistemologies) are apparently not yet taught in many media and communication PhD programmes....

#mcluhan #tetrad #notlightreading #mediastudies #mediaeffects #mediaecology