Buzz Across Borders: Analyzing the Global and Local Dynamics Shaping the ChatGPT Media Hype in China

ChatGPT ignited a global AI media hype. Surprisingly, China ranks as the leading country in online searches for “ChatGPT,” despite the platform’s limited accessibility there. In this study, we explore how the ChatGPT media hype was produced within a framework of international information flow and the localization of a global issue. We employ computational methods to investigate the inter-media and intra-media dynamics shaping the ChatGPT media hype in China. We built four corpora composed of news and social media data discussing ChatGPT: Chinese news (N = 30,061), Chinese social media posts (N = 226,374), global English news (N = 71,457), and global social media posts (N = 807,508). Results indicate that the volume of discussions on ChatGPT on global news, global social media, and Chinese social media all significantly influence that on Chinese ChatGPT news. Chinese media exhibit distinct topical interests compared to global media. Analysis of Chinese ChatGPT news coverage revealed that market-driven media are the primary contributors, and often relied on a narrow range of identical sources and adopted various strategies to increase visibility and audience engagement. The implications of these findings were also discussed.