Partisan Media Sentiment Toward Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming pervasive across society. However, its deployment appears to be a divisive issue. This research examines aversion to AI across the partisan divide. We analyze partisan media sentiment toward AI, a powerful driver of public opinion toward social issues. We conduct a text analysis of media articles on AI (N = 7,840) from several liberal-leaning and conservative-leaning media outlets. The results demonstrate that liberal-leaning media show a greater aversion to AI than conservative-leaning media. Furthermore, a mediation analysis suggests that liberal-leaning media are more concerned with AI magnifying social biases in society than conservative-leaning media, which drives the partisan media differences. Moreover, the results also show that media sentiment toward AI became more negative after George Floyd’s death, an event that heightened sensitivity about social biases in society. Implications for how these partisan media differences can polarize public opinion and policymaker support toward AI are discussed.