INTEGRATION OF AI IN SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT: PERCEPTION ANALYSIS OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

The fast adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) into the social media systems has altered the way information is dictated, created and received. The way people see and hear things is changed by recommendation algorithms, which help filter billions of users; generative models generate text, images and video at scale; and AI-enabled moderation systems influence the way people talk. The article is a research that investigates the perception of university students towards AI-mediated social media, in terms of awareness of algorithmic curation, attitudes towards generative media, perceived advantages and threat of AI integration and support of policy interventions. The data obtained by the study is based on quantitative and qualitative data collected through a mixture of the approach to research, which is stratified surveys, focus groups and case studies, and students of various majors participated in the study. Findings show mixed degrees of algorithmic literacy, worrying perceptions of filter bubbles, deepfakes and privacy, hesitant to use generative AI like ChatGPT and high-level approval of transparency and control features. The article places these results into the context of the existing academic literature on AI ethics, media studies and policy, and compares the best practices of international experience and offers recommendations to educators, platform designers and regulators. It concludes that optimizing benefits and reducing harm requires improving AI literacy and making recommendation systems more transparent and ensuring that policy interventions are aligned with student values. The research provides a comprehensive perspective on the connection between AI and social media in higher education and points to the areas of the future research.