Liberal media displays higher opposition to AI, citing concerns over bias and inequality, new study reveals

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Social Psychological and Personality Science. Additionally, the researchers highlighted that the variations in sentiment toward AI within partisan media outlets could potentially contribute to divergent public opinions on the subject. "Media sentiment is a powerful driver of public opinion, and many times policymakers look towards the media to predict public sentiment on contentious issues," stated Angela Yi, study author and a PhD student in the marketing department of Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business.

In conducting the study, the researchers assembled a dataset comprising more than 7,500 articles on artificial intelligence published between May 2019 and May 2021. These articles were sourced from diverse media outlets, including liberal-leaning publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as conservative-leaning outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. The selection criteria involved identifying articles with specific keywords such as "algorithm" or "artificial intelligence." The researchers utilized an automated text analysis tool to examine the "emotional tone" of the collected articles.

This tool operated by quantifying the variance between the percentage of positive emotion words and the percentage of negative emotion words within a given text. Subsequently, each article received a standardized 'emotional tone' measure or score based on this analysis. Reportedly, the researchers clarified that they refrained from making judgments about whether the liberal media or conservative media were operating optimally.