Modeling Civic Engagement in the Age of AI: A Communication Mediation Approach to AI News, Multifaceted Trust, and Participation in a Two-Wave Panel Study
TL;DR
It is shown that public engagement with AI-related issues depends on where people encounter AI news, how they discuss it, and which sources and institutions they come to trust, according to which sources and institutions they come to trust.
Abstract
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes both a topic of news coverage and a force shaping the information environment, citizens must make sense of AI-related issues while evaluating machine-generated content, journalistic coverage, and institutional actors. This study applies the Orientation-Stimulus-Reasoning-Orientation-Response framework to examine how AI-related news consumption is associated with interpersonal discussion, multifaceted trust, and AI-related offline civic participation. Using two-wave panel data from U.S. adults (Wave 1 = 2,010; Wave 2 = 942), the study models AI-related news consumption across television, newspapers, online news sites, and social media as the stimulus; AI-related online and offline discussion as reasoning; trust in AI-generated news, legacy media coverage of AI, and AI-related institutional actors as reorientation; and AI-related offline civic participation as the response. Results reveal a selective communication pathway. Newspaper and social media AI news use were the most consistent predictors of AI-related discussion. Online discussion was associated with later trust in AI-generated news and legacy media coverage of AI, and trust in AI-generated news and AI-related institutional actors was associated with later offline participation. The observed indirect pathways operated through online discussion and trust in AI-generated news. These findings refine communication mediation research by showing that public engagement with AI-related issues depends on where people encounter AI news, how they discuss it, and which sources and institutions they come to trust.