Artificial Intelligence (AI) is currently one of the most debated topics, raising a wide range of questions that go beyond labour market preoccupations, to include the effects on human cognition, emotional limitations of robots, science-fiction dystopia, environmental concerns, and the challenges in human-machine interaction. Despite the intricacies surrounding the growing impact of AI on different aspects of daily life, what do non-specialists understand about AI, and how do they feel about it?

Institutional and media narratives play a crucial role in shaping public perception of political and social phenomena. Arguably, their influence is even more significant when specialised subjects are concerned, that are difficult to grasp for non-experts. This project explores the impact that institutional and journalistic narratives can have on the public perception of AI, as a crucial step towards developing effective communication strategies that promote a nuanced understanding of technology. In particular, the project aims to shed light on the impact on public opinion of AI narratives in a contrastive perspective, by looking at one European political and social context, namely the Italian one, and one extra-European country, namely China. The interest for the Chinese context derives from its international status, but also from China being regarded as the top contender for world dominance in the digital and AI sectors. This competing ambition has been openly articulated by China in various official documents, setting the goals to achieve partial leadership in the sector by 2025 and to establish its leadership in AI innovation by 2030.

Against this backdrop, this project investigates:

1. the discursive strategies employed in the narration and depiction of Artificial Intelligence in media discourse;

2. political-institutional communication on Artificial Intelligence from a discursive point of view, and the degree of interaction between institutional and media discourse in the individual context;

3. the public perception of artificial intelligence: what is the level of understanding among the general population? What emotions do these technological innovations evoke, and how do people respond to media narratives about AI in the two contexts?

The research applies discourse analysis and corpus linguistics tools to institutional and news texts collected in Italian and Chinese, in order to identify the dominant narratives and frames. With the aim to measure the reception of the institutional and the journalistic narratives deployed, a public opinion survey and online public discourse analysis are conducted in Italy and in China respectively.

This three-step research project represents a unique undertaking in discourse studies, as it examines both the production of knowledge (institutional and media discourse on AI) and its reception (public opinion on AI gathered through political science methodologies) within the same research framework. The ultimate goals of the project are twofold: to challenge and enhance our understanding of AI by showcasing the contributions that Humanities research can make to the analysis of its social and cultural impacts, and to promote more effective public communication about this disruptive phenomenon.

The project implements the strategic guidelines outlined in the PNR (National Research Plan), which urges the Humanities to address the issue of the human-machine relationship, explicitly calling for an investigation of “representations, narratives, and images that shape human expectations and fears towards technological mediation, leaving a trace in the social imagination.” Through academic cooperation and the dissemination of results, the project aims to enhance understanding of the impacts of technological progress through interdisciplinary dialogue between various fields, while simultaneously establishing the significance of the Humanities in studying the implications of the increasingly pervasive presence of AI in everyday life.

Participants:

Emma Lupano (PI), Paolo Orrù, Stefano Rombi, Alessandra Melis

Project financed by the European Union - NextGenerationEU

D.M. 737/2021 – Interdisciplinary research activities on relevant cross-cutting subjects for the National Research Plan (PNR)