Framing Artificial Intelligence in Journalism: Dominant Frames and Systematic Omissions in Spanish Digital News Outlets from Pre-Boom to Implementation (2022–2024)

Abstract

[Abstract]: This study analyses how Spanish digital news outlets covered the arrival of artificial intelligence in journalism and the social impact they attributed to it. That general objective is pursued through four specific research objectives rather than through hypotheses in a descriptive and exploratory design that traces the emergence and distribution of media attention, identifies dominant and omitted issue-specific frames, and assesses their association with journalistic variables. A longitudinal quantitative content analysis covers 242 news items from ten leading Spanish digital outlets, coded in their entirety rather than sampled, across the three phases of AI’s public visibility between 2022 and 2024. Coverage follows a compressed attention cycle in which enthusiasm and alarm unfold simultaneously rather than consecutively. Dominant frames centre on generative AI in the processing phase, credibility, ethics in the use of data, legal responsibility and information quality, and timeliness and accuracy as its main advantage and disadvantage. Systematically omitted are the effects of AI on the normative functions of journalism. The main source is the variable most closely associated with these patterns: expert sources broaden the range of frames, whereas the overrepresented media-sector actors narrow it. Spanish digital media thus construct AI as an operational rather than a democratic issue.