Faculty Affairs and Academic Programs
Tina Law
Social Sciences; Public Policy; Public Affairs
Understanding Public Engagement with AI: A Computational Text and Image Analysis of YouTube Videos
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology and applications are currently being developed and deployed at an unprecedented pace in the United States, generating important social, political, and economic consequences but guided by little to no public input. How can Americans shape AI technology and its growing influence in their lives? A necessary first step toward increasing public deliberation and governance of AI is to understand how Americans currently learn about AI. This research project will examine how the public makes sense of AI through a computational text and image analysis of YouTube videos, which are increasingly used by Americans to learn new topics and skills. I will address four research questions: what information about AI is available on YouTube, who are viewed as AI “experts,” how is AI explained, and how do users interact with these experts? I will use manual coding and generative AI models to analyze metadata, images, transcripts, and user comments from a newly constructed database of YouTube videos about AI (n = 49,792). This project will help researchers, policymakers, and grantmaking institutions to identify new strategies for addressing the growing effects of AI on society and to develop potential interventions to increase public deliberation and governance of AI. This project will also advance knowledge about the contemporary dynamics of expertise, specifically the role of social media platforms in shaping public understanding of new topics such as AI and how increased access to expertise through social media may present new opportunities and challenges for democratic engagement.
