Media representations of artificial intelligence: surveying the field

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a prominent issue in news and social media. Consequently, scholars have started to analyze such media representations of AI. This chapter reviews this emerging research field, its characteristics, and its findings. It examines which aspects of AI are analyzed, on which countries and media it focuses, and which methodologies it employs. It also identifies central findings and lays out directions for future research. It finds that the overwhelming majority of the existing research focuses on news media coverage of AI, showing a strong increase in reporting on AI, largely positive evaluations and economic framing. Social media communication about AI is considerably less studied. Overall, research focuses strongly on “Western” countries, particularly the US and UK. Methodologically, research focuses mostly on single case studies, employs quantitative approaches, and almost exclusively analyzes written text, neglecting visual and multimodal representations of AI.