No 56 (2024): Digitalization, politics and artificial intelligence

Politics is one of the fields where artificial intelligence (AI) arrived later, but where its capacity for influence is most significant. The ability to identify behavioural patterns and predict outcomes makes AI a powerful tool that can be used to expand democratic horizons, improve decision-making, enhance active listening, and foster greater citizen participation. However, it can also be used to monitor and manipulate citizens, which, as Zuboff warns, could render representative democracy unfeasible and create an "informational dictatorship."

This issue addresses the integration of AI in political communication from three perspectives. The first focuses on analysing the academic debate about the possibilities and threats of AI's integration into political communication.

The second examines the AI tools used by Spanish fact-checkers to verify political information and mitigate the risks of disinformation, especially during electoral processes. This is a highly relevant topic, which is of great concern to Europe as less than two months remain until the European Elections.

The third explores the educational challenges faced by journalists due to the use of AI in their professional field and analyses the characteristics that an educational programme should have to tackle AI challenges in Latin America.