Algorithmic emotions and digital deception: AI's emerging role in political communication in Southeast Asia

Despite the rapid expansion of AI technology in digital communication, this study analyzes how AI shapes political communication in Southeast Asia. The primary focus is on how AI creates, distributes, and improves emotionally charged and manipulative political content and how it affects political polarisation in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. This mixed-methods inquiry analyzes the utilization of AI in digital public spheres through a combination of public opinion surveys, automated analysis of social media sentiment, interviews, and analysis of digital discourse. The majority of participants reported strong emotional responses towards political information produced by AI, particularly regarding religion and ethnicity. Interviews and discourse analysis revealed that political actors can imply the use of AI technology to polarise public opinion or create negative discourse on social media. This paper contains integrations of affect Theory, algorithmic agency, and digital political communication. The results of this study highlight the need for improved digital literacy and emotional intelligence to address the potential for affective engineering in political contexts driven by AI. In addition, this study opens up future opportunities for additional study into similarly constructed social forces of resistance that could combat algorithmically driven political content across digital public spheres within democratic settings.