Framing the Future: The Politicization of Artificial Intelligence in Swedish and American News Media.

Sammanfattning

This study examines the differences and similarities in the news media’s portrayal of political topics related to artificial intelligence in the United States and Sweden. AI is increasingly politicized but is poorly understood from a political science perspective. By examining these two innovative and prosperous countries’ media landscapes, it aims to further our understanding of the cross-national differences in media’s portrayal of AI and broaden the research field by shedding light on the politicization of emerging technologies. Relating to the third aim, a deductive approach to frame theory is employed, structured around meta-frames and political frames. The salience and sentiments of the frames are evaluated by conducting a quantitative content analysis of eight Swedish and US newspapers. The findings suggest a mix of convergences and divergences. The countries’ news reporting largely converged at the meta-level, displaying similar salience and sentiment distribution of the political frame relative to the other meta-frames. Swedish and US media diverged to a larger extent in the occurrence of political frames. Swedish media emphasize AI regulation, whereas US media focus more on fake news, deepfakes, and the geopolitical AI rivalry. Moreover, whereas US media tend to be positive about AI in national security issues, Swedish media portrays these issues negatively. It is concluded that as the technology advances, critical questions are raised, thus the necessity to understand the political discussion surrounding artificial intelligence.