The Political Science Department and the Democracy Research Unit (DRU) are pleased to organize the event “Youth Political Socialization in Focus: Data, Psychology, and Everyday Influence.”
Sonja Utz – Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (IWM)
Communicative AI and political information-seeking: the credibility challenge
Communicative AI systems like ChatGPT or Alexa have rapidly gained popularity; and many people, especially youth, use them for information search. In the political domain, this might be problematic because these chatbots are not unbiased and can even be influenced to spread propaganda. It is, thus, important to judge the credibility of the information provided by communicative AI. While the problem of hallucinations and misinformation from communicative AI has been widely discussed, another factor that makes people prone to belief in misinformation from communicative AI has been overlooked: The conversational way in which communicative AI presents information might also influence credibility judgments. I will present two experiments in which we examined the influence of presentation mode – voice (e.g., Alexa), dynamic text (e.g., ChatGPT) and static text (e.g., Wikipedia) – on credibility judgments of information with varying accuracy. The results show that people struggle more to discern accurate from less accurate information when it is presented by a communicative AI. Additionally, we explored the underlying psychological processes that contribute to these credibility judgments. First, data from a longitudinal study also demonstrate the increasing use of communicative AI for information search and support the relationship between perception of communicative AI and credibility judgments. The implications of these findings for political information-seeking will be discussed.
Fuyuan Shen – Pennsylvania State University
The Power of Political Conversion Stories: How They Shape Message Attitudes
The use of political conversion narratives, wherein individuals publicly recount their shift in support to an opposing party’s candidate, has seen a notable increase. The talk will focus on the recent research we have conducted to examine the impact of such conversion messages disseminated via social media on individuals’ message attitudes. Results from our experiment revealed that conversion political posts exerted a significant influence on participants’ message attitudes, regardless of their pre-existing party affiliations. Furthermore, a significant interaction between message type and political involvement revealed that highly involved individuals exhibited greater susceptibility to conversion messages. Source credibility emerged as a significant mediator of these effects. These findings offer valuable theoretical and practical insights into the persuasive power of conversion messages.
Thaiane Moreira de Oliveria – Universidade Federal Fluminense
Science Under Siege: Belief Systems, Disinformation, and the Populist War on Academia in Latin America
In recent years, scientific institutions and universities across Latin America have faced escalating attacks fueled by disinformation and ideological polarization. This talk will explore how belief systems shape the acceptance or rejection of scientific knowledge, how populist movements weaponize anti-intellectualism to undermine academia, and how disinformation is used as a political tool to erode trust in scientific expertise. Drawing from the Brazilian context, we will examine the broader implications of these trends for democracy, policymaking, and the future of knowledge production