Covering artificial intelligence: the role of European Union, British, and American media outlets in generative AI Visibility

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as one of the central topics of 2023 with extensive media coverage of the most relevant technologies and issues associated with this subject. In a highly competitive digital media landscape, search engine optimization (SEO) has become cybermedia’s primary strategy to increase visibility and attract more readers. The objective of this paper is to analyze the visibility of content published by the media relating to artificial intelligence, focusing on a selection of related keywords. The research also aims to investigate how this visibility has impacted both the technologies themselves and the analyzed media outlets. A total of 69 media outlets from 12 European Union countries, the United States, and the United Kingdom were examined. The results reveal a pronounced dominance of U.S. media, closely followed by Spanish media. There is an uneven distribution of media outlets across most of the countries analyzed, with two or three most of the of visibility. The search queries that contribute the most visibility to the analyzed media align with an informational intent, are of the long-tail type, and are associated with OpenAI technologies, particularly ChatGPT. Moreover, these queries are primarily found in news sections dedicated to science and technology. The findings underscore both the increasing interest in the subject and the effective SEO practices of certain media outlets.