Tracing the Legitimacy of Artificial Intelligence – A Media Analysis, 1980-2020

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has received ambivalent evaluations, ranging from AI as a great opportunity and solution to crucial problems of our time to AI as a threat to humanity. For AI technologies to diffuse, they need to gain legitimacy. We trace the legitimacy of AI in society from 1980 to 2020. For our analysis, we rely on 2,543 newspaper articles from The New York Times as a reflection of societal discourse over the legitimacy of AI. Using computer-assisted content analysis, we find a sharp increase in media coverage around the mid-2010s. We find the language used in the articles to be predominantly positive and to show little changes over time. Our analysis also uncovers six highly discussed industries in the context of AI

Creating Value from Personal Data – On the Legitimacy of Business Practices in the Field of Internet-Enabled Services

Practices to create value from personal data in internet-enabled services (IES) remain socially contested. Indeed, the commercial exploitation of personal data violates social expectations and conflicts with individuals’ privacy needs. To explore this tension, we draw on media coverage on IES between 1990-2015. In doing so we examine what, why and to what extent particular business practices have struggled to gain legitimacy. Our findings provide evidence for 1) the power of social control mechanisms in enforcing business practices to match with social expectations, and, paradoxically 2) a fundamental change in these very social expectations in the form of a shift in the dominant institutional logics surrounding IES. By elaborating on the underlying processes of collective assessments of legitimacy in the field of IES, we draw attention to the role of a collective privacy calculus, which might be more salient in shaping flows of personal data than previously expected