The Indirect Effects of Episodic-Thematic Framing on Information Sharing About the Economic Threat of Artificial Intelligence

Developing artificial intelligence (AI) equitably necessitates understanding how nonexperts conceptualize and share news about technoscientific risk. We examine a model predicting AI information sharing online from an interaction of framing strategies, through psychological proximity to the impacts of AI and perceived AI risk. A panel of N = 412 participants were exposed to either a control message; or one of four manipulated messages related to AI risks. Contrary to expectations, thematically framed explicit risk news primed psychological proximity compared to both a control message and episodic frame condition. Meanwhile, episodic explicit risk frames did not prime psychological proximity over a control message. These results contest the notion that episodic frames should be associated with psychological proximity to a risk over more general framing strategies. Our results support prior research suggesting that where risk-news primes psychological proximity, the decrease in distance is in-turn associated with greater risk perception and increased likelihood of news sharing online.