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Generative artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of the information environment through which citizens encounter politics, search for information, evaluate public issues, and participate in democratic life. Yet citizens differ substantially in their ability to access, understand, evaluate, and effectively use AI systems. These differences may constitute a new dimension of the digital divide, with important consequences for democratic participation and political inequality.
This panel examines AI literacy as a form of democratic competence and asks how inequalities in AI-related skills intersect with established inequalities in media literacy, digital literacy, education, socioeconomic status, age, gender, language, and geography. Moving beyond conventional understandings of the digital divide as differences in access and use, the panel focuses on citizens’ capacities to recognize AI-generated content, assess the credibility and limitations of AI outputs, understand algorithmic mediation, formulate effective queries, verify information, and use AI tools for political information and participation.
The panel welcomes theoretical, empirical, comparative, and methodological contributions addressing AI literacy and democratic citizenship. Of particular interest are studies examining vulnerable or underrepresented populations, cross-national differences, inequalities between the Global North and Global South, interventions designed to improve AI or media literacy, and the relationship between AI literacy and political knowledge, misinformation susceptibility, political efficacy, participation, and trust.
By bringing research on the digital divide into dialogue with emerging scholarship on artificial intelligence, the panel seeks to identify whether AI is reducing barriers to political information and participation or creating new inequalities between citizens who can successfully navigate AI-mediated environments and those who cannot. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates about inclusion, participation, and democratic resilience in increasingly AI-mediated societies.
Keywords: AI literacy; media literacy; digital literacy; digital divide; political inequality; democratic participation; generative AI; political knowledge
Possible Paper Themes
• Measuring AI literacy and political AI literacy
• AI literacy, media literacy, and misinformation
• Age, gender, education, and socioeconomic inequalities in AI use
• AI divides in the Global South
• AI literacy and political participation
• AI literacy interventions and civic education
• Trust in AI-generated political information
• Accessibility, language, and unequal benefits from generative AI
• AI literacy and political efficacy
• From access divide to skills and outcomes divides