A Discourse Analysis of AI Narratives in Spanish Speakers' Social Media Platforms

Abstract

This study examines how international news outlets frame artificial intelligence (AI) discussions on social media in Spanish-speaking Latin America, highlighting social media's role in shaping perceptions and attitudes. Fuchs (2024:35) conceptualises social media as techno-social systems in which information and communication technologies enable and constrain human activities that create knowledge produced, distributed, and consumed in a dynamic and reflexive process that connects technological structures and human agency. The paper centres on how discourses in social media are communicated to audiences when content about AI is distributed on those platforms, looking at the narratives embedded in those posts. This exploratory research uses critical discourse analysis to analyse how selected regional outlets address AI outside the Global North. It focuses on how news stories are published on the X.com (formerly known as Twitter) accounts of CNN Español, BBC Mundo, Infobae, and Telesur, two outlets coming from the Global North and two outlets originating in the Global South. Despite the growing popularity of platforms like TikTok and Instagram, X.com still fulfils the role of the digital public sphere, where it remains a popular social media application in Latin America with 57.5 million users (Statista, 2024). Using Norman Fairclough's three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis, textual analysis, discourse practice, and social practice, the initial results of over 300 tweets found that AI is often framed using metaphors of competition and transformation, portraying it as a geopolitical contest and an unstoppable societal force. AI is also personified with human-like qualities, which can obscure the human and corporate influences behind its development. In addition, the study highlights distinctive patterns in how AI content is produced and consumed across social media platforms, where it uses expert opinions to legitimise its content. Finally, it reflects on how the editorial approaches of the selected outlets demonstrate how institutional ideologies and power structures influence the framing of AI. These findings contribute to the knowledge about journalism discourses and AI from the perspective of the Global South.