From Industry Hype to Emerging Criticism: Analysing Chilean News Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence

AI has become (again) a matter of public interest, and it is crucial to investigate how the news media intervenes in the hype and publicity around AI in different countries. At the intersection between Media Studies and Science and Technology Studies (STS), this article examines portrayals of AI and related technologies in the Chilean news media. We curated a corpus of nearly 7000 AI-related news articles from 2008 to 2023 from four Chilean newspapers. We combined an LDA topic modelling with an analysis with dictionaries of the key actors and critical issues discussed around AI. The analysis shows the explosive growth of the media coverage of AI in recent years, as well as the diversity of topics associated with AI in Chile. We found a high prominence of topics related to industry and technology, a high visibility of international actors, mostly U.S. tech companies, and a low level of mentions of critical issues around AI. Moreover, we also discuss the low coverage of the State’s AI use, the emergent use of generative AI in tech journalism, and the prominence of topics such as the arts and humanities that appear as emerging spaces for the problematisation of AI in Chile.

人工智能（AI）再度成为公众关注的热点议题，探究不同国家的新闻媒体如何介入人工智能相关的炒作与宣传，具有关键意义。本研究立足于传媒研究与科学技术研究（Science and Technology Studies, STS）的交叉领域，聚焦智利新闻媒体对人工智能及相关技术的报道呈现。我们从四家智利报纸中精选了2008年至2023年间近7000篇与人工智能相关的新闻报道，构建了专属研究语料库。我们结合潜在狄利克雷分配主题建模（Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling, LDA）与关键主体词典分析方法，对人工智能相关讨论中的核心行动主体与批判性议题展开系统性分析。分析结果显示，近年来人工智能的媒体报道呈现爆发式增长态势，智利地区与人工智能相关的报道主题亦呈现出显著多样性。研究发现，与工业和技术领域相关的主题占据极高占比，以美国科技公司为代表的国际主体出镜率颇高，而围绕人工智能的批判性议题提及率却处于较低水平。此外，本研究还探讨了智利媒体对政府人工智能应用的报道不足、生成式AI（Generative AI）在科技新闻报道中的新兴应用，以及艺术与人文等主题的凸显——这类主题在智利已成为对人工智能进行问题化探讨的新兴领域。