Informing AI Risk Assessment with News Media: Analyzing National and Political Variation in the Coverage of AI Risks

Risk-based approaches to AI governance often center the technological artifact as the primary focus of risk assessments, overlooking systemic risks that emerge from the complex interaction between AI systems and society. One potential source to incorporate more societal context into these approaches is the news media, as it embeds and reflects complex interactions between AI systems, human stakeholders, and the larger society. News media is influential in terms of which AI risks are emphasized and discussed in the public sphere, and thus which risks are deemed important. Yet, variations in the news media between countries and across different value systems (e.g. political orientations) may differentially shape the prioritization of risks through the media's agenda setting and framing processes. To better understand these variations, this work presents a comparative analysis of a cross-national sample of news media spanning 6 countries (the U.S., the U.K., India, Australia, Israel, and South Africa). Our findings show that AI risks are prioritized differently across nations and shed light on how left vs. right leaning U.S. based outlets not only differ in the prioritization of AI risks in their coverage, but also use politicized language in the reporting of these risks. These findings can inform risk assessors and policy-makers about the nuances they should account for when considering news media as a supplementary source for risk-based governance approaches.