American Vs. Chinese Newspapers’ Attitude Towards AI-generated Chatbots: An Appraisal Analysis.

Abstract

This study examines the representation of the AI-generated Chatbots; Chat GPT and DeepSeek in opinion articles published in American and Chinese Newspapers: <i>The New York Times</i> and <i>China Daily</i> respectively. The study applies Martin and white’s (2005) appraisal model to investigate the attitudinal language employed in the articles which reflects the attitude embraced by the newspapers which could be for or against the implementation of the AI tools in daily activities. Twenty articles are selected across two time frames; ten articles at the onset of the new technology from December 2022 to May 2023 and ten articles at a later period from October 2024 to March 2025 to examine if a change in attitude takes place over time. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach: a quantitative analysis of appraisal utterances and a qualitative interpretation of attitude and ideological alignment. The findings reveal that there was a shift in both newspapers’ attitude. <i>The New York Times</i> attitude starts as being neutral at an early period, before adopting a dominantly positive attitude of AI-generated Chatbots through more recent articles. The <i>China Daily</i> articles, however shifted from a strongly negative attitude in the early 2023 to a totally positive one by the late 2024 and the early 2025. The results and implications are discussed with reference to the appraisal theory.

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