In some respects, social media and Emotional AI can be considered as something akin to kindred spirits, due to the fact that both have only recently risen in prominence and that government supervision and regulation of them remain murky and somewhat disorganized. It is interesting, then, that a combination of social media and affective computing has the potential to influence everything from our decision to buy Oreos instead of Chips Ahoy to whom we should elect as leaders of our country.

In this regard, Emotional AI can play a vital role in exploiting the emotionality of political communication. One only has to remember Cambridge Analytica’s targeted advertisings which manipulated the emotions of the average voter to such an extent that the likes of the 2016 US Elections and the infamous Brexit would most likely have resulted in different outcomes, had it not been for the now-defunct political data analytics company. 

Using the almost limitless amount of data available on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc., Cambridge Analytica was able to develop sophisticated algorithms which targeted ads to influence or reinforce voters’ perception of reality. 

As a result, people have steadily become more aware of politically and commercially minded micro-targeting strategies, but the use of affective computing in social media is far from over. In fact, concerns over the machinations of artificial intelligence over a person’s decisions are significantly less in East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, etc.), which helps explain why China is at the forefront of emotional artificial intelligence alongside the United States with Japan only narrowly behind in some areas.