AI in the German Media: Narratives of AI-in-Particular and AI-in-General in German Media Reporting About Artificial Intelligence

The continuing high level of media attention to advances in AI has raised scholarly concerns about hype. However, existing scholarship on AI hype considers its object of study, ‘AI’, as given and stable, rather than tracing how it is discursively constructed. This paper presents a qualitative discourse analysis of four years of AI coverage in German newspapers. It traces how the object of AI itself is constructed in discourse, rather than assuming it to be monolithic and stable. We identify two distinct constructions of AI: AI-in-general constructs AI as a promising future technology, while AI-in-particular zooms in on local application contexts in which AI is already being used. We argue that AI-in-general, and its narratives foregrounding a global technology race, reflect crucial elements of hype and also serve as a pervasive backdrop for the contextual narratives of AI-in-particular. In terms of broader debates about hype, we therefore conclude that contextual narratives are not a panacea against hype.