AI & SOCIETY

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The hopes and fears of artificial intelligence: a comparative

computational discourse analysis
Kasper Trolle Elmholdt1 · Jeppe Agger Nielsen1 · Christoffer Koch Florczak1 · Roman Jurowetzki2 · Daniel Hain2

Received: 11 April 2024 / Accepted: 23 January 2025

© The Author(s) 2025

Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured the interest of multiple actors with speculations about its benefits and dangers.
Despite increasing scholarly attention to the discourses of AI, there are limited insights on how different groups interpret
and debate AI and shape its opportunities for action. We consider AI an issue field understood as a contested phenomenon
where heterogeneous actors assert and debate the meanings and consequences of AI. Drawing on computational social sci-
ence methods, we analyzed large amounts of text on how politicians (parliamentarians) consultancies (high reputation firms),
and lay experts (AI-forum Reddit users) articulate meanings about AI. Through topic modeling, we identified diverse and
co-existing discourses: politicians predominantly articulated AI as a societal issue requiring an ethical response, consultan-
cies stressed AI as a business opportunity pushing a transformation-oriented discourse, and lay experts expressed AI as a
technical issue shaping a techno-feature discourse. Moreover, our analysis details the hopes and fears within AI discourses,
revealing that sentiment varies by actor group. Based on these findings, we contribute new insights about AI as an issue field
shaped by the discursive work performed by heterogeneous actors.

Keywords Artificial intelligence"· Discourse"· Issue field"· Computational social science

1 Introduction AI provides a particularly salient example of such dis-

cursive shaping. Scholars have underscored how AI is asso-
Scholars have shown that emerging digital technologies— ciated with a range of hopes and fears that inform public
such as blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI)—engage perception, policy directions, and social responses (Marres
various actors in discursive processes to shape collective et"al. 2024; Munk et"al. 2024). The nature of AI discourse is
understanding (Miranda et" al. 2022a; Pollock and Wil- inherently contested, mixing optimism and skepticism into
liams 2010). Indeed, discourse"plays a critical role in form- a complex, sometimes incoherent landscape (Bareis and
ing expectations and assigning sentiments—such as"hopes Katzenbach 2022; Cave and Dihal 2019). Consequently,
and fears—to emerging digital technologies (Roberge et"al. there have been calls to better understand how heteroge-
2020; Zeng et"al. 2022; Zhai et"al. 2020; Nielsen et"al. 2024), neous actors with diverse interests interpret, debate, and
and multiple types of actors—politicians, corporations, con- position digital technologies like AI (Miranda et"al. 2022a;
sultancies, and social influencers in online communities— Dahabiyeh and Constantinides 2022; Munk et" al. 2024;
are"likely"to shape"how new technologies are perceived and Sloane 2024).
acted upon through discourse"(Miranda et"al. 2022a; Pollock Such inquiry is essential because distinct actors shape
and Williams 2010). opportunities for action in differing ways through their
discursive engagements (Elmholdt et"al. 2024; Meyer and
Höllerer 2010; Maguire and Hardy 2009; Nielsen et"al.,
* Kasper Trolle Elmholdt 2024), and the adoption of AI depends on how people view
elm@[Link] its benefits (Nambisan et"al. 2017). As Miranda and col-
leagues note (2022a, p. 1422), through discourse, actors
1
Department of"Politics and"Society, Aalborg University, “collectively interpret the innovation, legitimate it, and
9220"Aalborg"O, Denmark
mobilize the collective action necessary for its diffusion”.
2
Aalborg University Business School, Aalborg University, However, while AI is sometimes perceived as an umbrella
9220"Aalborg"O, Denmark

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 AI & SOCIETY

term that signal a coherent"stable thing (Suchman 2024), 2 Artificial intelligence discourses
AI technologies are many and are shaped"by multiple"dis-
courses, and we, therefore, aim to examine AI as a contested Although AI is not a new phenomenon"(McCarthy et"al.
phenomenon manifested in a plurality of discourses (Gal 1955), in recent years, awareness of"AI and associated
et"al. 2022). Our focus is on how meaning construction is concepts—such as machine learning and generative mod-
influenced by multiple actors with varying interests, each els like GPT—has grown remarkably. This surge is driven
striving to legitimize or delegitimize certain viewpoints by" the rise in available digital"data, computer processing
and interpretations. In this context, we pose the following power and innovations in algorithm development (Fleming
research questions. Through which topics do actors discur- 2019; Fountaine et"al. 2019; Faraj et"al. 2018). As with
sively construct AI? And which sentiments about AI are other emerging technologies, debates around their mean-
articulated, and by whom? ings and uses are inevitable, and AI has become a focal
To understand how diverse actors shape discourses about point of public attention (Munk et"al. 2024).
AI, we take inspiration from an issue field perspective (Hoff- Studies have highlighted"how public discourses and
man 1999; Buchanan et"al. 2022). This lens allows us to media narratives tend to present AI predominantly as
view AI as a contested field where heterogeneous actors with an engine of economic growth and technological pro-
divergent interests define and debate its organizational and gress, while downplaying potential downsides and ethical
societal implications. Methodologically, we adopt compu- concerns (Dandurand et"al. 2023; Gourlet et"al. 2024).
tational social science methods (Nelson 2017; Powell et"al. Munk and co-authors (2024) examined AI within the
2016; Goldenstein and Poschmann 2019; Miranda et"al. scientific discourse, which predominately portrays algo-
2022a). Specifically,"we scrape webpages and apply topic rithms as problem-solvers, reinforcing the view of AI as
modeling and sentiment analysis"to conduct a computation- a progressive force rather than a source of controversy.
ally driven discourse analysis of AI. These machine learning Similarly,"Zeng et"al. (2022) studied the public discourse
and natural language processing (NLP) approaches enable about AI in China and found that it was dominated by
us to analyze a greater volume of" textual data than conven- industry and political actors and characterized mainly by
tional document analysis, expanding the depth and breadth discussions about the economic potential of the technol-
of our inquiry. Such computational approaches are increas- ogy, with strongly positive evaluations and little critical
ingly prevalent in science and technology studies and the debate. Ossewaarde and Gulenc (2020) also highlight the
social sciences more broadly (Madsen and Munk 2019; optimistic view on AI in political discourses concluding
Munk et"al. 2022; Aranda et"al. 2021; Hannigan et"al. 2019). that “utopian beliefs stating AI will transform national
In our study, we analyze the articulation of AI issues concerns favorably; and that technological solutionist
within three actor groups: (1) politicians (parliamentarians), expectations present AI as the answer to national chal-
(2) consultancies (high reputation firms offering expert lenges” (p 53). Zhai et"al. (2020) found that news media
advice), and (3) lay experts (in online Reddit"communities). mainly portrayed AI from three perspectives—an imagina-
Examining these groups allows us to understand how actors tion, a commercial product, and scientific research—and
with differing motivations and audiences (the public, indus- that adverse reports focused on issues related to AI ethics.
try, and citizens) attribute hopes, fears, and thus actionable Similarly, Korneeva et"al. (2023) relied on content analysis
opportunities to AI. Our study contributes new insights into of newspaper articles on AI and found that the legitimation
the literature on AI discourses and meaning construction. of AI was dominated by positive media framing. In another
First, through an issue field lens, we highlight the diverse study, Nguyen and Hekman (2022) analyzed how AI was
and co-existing AI discourses as politicians, consultancies, portrayed in"news media, demonstrating that"AI's ubiquity
and lay experts articulate their meaning about AI in differ- surged in the mid-2010s and that news discourse became
ent ways. Second, in terms of methods, we illustrate how more critical over time.
different techniques from NLP and machine learning can Together, these studies indicate the multiple meanings
advance"research on discourse and meaning-related topics"in of AI and illustrate the main techno-optimism associated
relation to"AI and emerging technologies. with AI (Sloane 2024). However, recent"scholarship has
The paper is structured as follows. In the next sections, we emphasized"the complexity of AI discourse, advocating
outline our theoretical background, elaborate on our method- for AI to be considered"as a"“super-controversy” and urg-
ology, and then move on to our analysis. We then"discuss our ing attention to “AI frictions” that expose potential harms
findings and contributions, concluding"with final remarks. and challenge dominant narratives (Marres et"al. 2024).
By doing so, these authors aim to question the depic-
tion of AI as a stable or reified entity (Suchman 2024).
Despite the recognition of"of AI as a contested topic, we
AI & SOCIETY

still know little about the dynamics of how heterogene- a process that imbues meaning into emerging technologies
ous actor groups, embedded in different organizational and shapes opportunities for action.
fields, contribute to legitimizing and delegitimizing AI's
various"meanings (Christin 2017; Elmholdt et"al. 2024;
Fligstein and McAdam 2012). While existing studies have 3 Data and methods
concentrated on individual actors, such as news media or
politicians, our study"includes multiple actors to explore Applying computational methods is still a relatively new
their collective role in shaping AI"discourse, thus how approach in the social sciences (Goldenstein and Poschmann
AI technologies should be perceived and acted upon. In 2019). However, an expanding body of literature has
doing so, we adopt an issue field perspective (Hoffman emerged"that employs unsupervised NLP techniques, par-
1999), which we argue offers a valuable"perspective for ticularly topic modeling, to analyze large corpora of texts
understanding distributed efforts of interpreting and con- (Aranda et"al. 2021; Hannigan et"al. 2019; Di Maggio 2015).
structing opportunities for action through AI. Topic modeling methods enable the discovery of novel,
emergent, and abstract themes within the text without pre-
defined categorization, and their inductive nature allows
2.1 An issue field perspective them to expand upon existing"categorization and classifica-
tion systems (Hannigan et"al. 2019). Consequently, topic
Inspired by Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of a socially con- modeling techniques appear well suited for"mapping issue
structed arena, scholars have defined the field "as a unit of fields, which are hard to pre-categorize because they include
analysis, instead of focusing on solo organizations or people, emergent and shifting topics. Moreover, topic modeling"can
to examine all relevant players in processes of stability and facilitate traditional qualitative approaches for discourse
change” (Oberg et"al. 2021, p. 21). While organizational analyses (Aranda et"al. 2021), particularly when combined
fields are organized around activities and forms of exper- with additional computational techniques such as sentiment
tise in a specific industry or sector, such as healthcare or analysis.
law firms (DiMaggio and Powell 1983), issue fields emerge Our methodological framework builds on recent devel-
within or across those fields when actors engage in discus- opments in computational anthropology and digital social
sions about a “central issue” in societal matters of con- research that seek to productively combine computational
cern—such as climate change or emerging digital technol- and qualitative methods (Munk et"al. 2022; Beaulieu 2017).
ogy (Wooten and Hoffman 2017; Zietsma et"al. 2017). Issue Rather than viewing computational methods as a replace-
fields are, by default, contested and can be understood as ment for qualitative analysis, we follow what Munk et"al.
“spaces wherein actors relate to one another out of shared, (2022) term a “computer-assisted” rather than “computer-
though not necessarily consensual, understandings about the led” approach. This aligns with emerging work in compu-
field” (Wooten and Hoffman 2017, p. 61). Hence, the discur- tational ethnography that positions computational tools as
sive activities within an issue field coalesce around the issue “scaffolding for ethnographic insights” (Shadoan and Dudek
that serves as a connection point where competing interests 2013) while maintaining the core strengths of qualitative
engage in issue interpretation (Hoffman 1999). The focus interpretation.
on issue fields, therefore, foregrounds how various actors The approach draws on DiMaggio et"al.’s (2013) dem-
deliberately shape and appropriate societal issues (Hoffman onstration that computational methods can support cultural
1999; Fligstein and McAdam 2012). analysis while preserving a commitment to understanding
The"boundaries ofissue fields are dictated by the defini- meaning in context. Following Evans and Aceves’ (2016)
tion and scale of the issue (Buchanan et"al. 2022), with some framework for mining text for social theory, we use compu-
issues remaining limited to a particular location and others tational methods to systematically identify patterns and areas
expanding into"transnational contexts that"cross various bor- requiring deeper qualitative investigation, rather than treat-
ders, such as those concerning"corporate social responsibil- ing computational outputs as definitive analytical products.
ity, climate change, and in our case, AI. Such issue fields Drawing on computational social science methods, we
“span national borders without an overarching authority to propose and implement a methodological framework that
enforce the rules of the game” (Ansari et"al. 2013, p. 3). combines topic modeling and sentiment analysis techniques
Since discourses about technologies are recognized as cru- to explore and examine the discourse within an issue field
cial for shaping opportunities for action (Gal et"al. 2022; comprising diverse actors. Our approach involves analyzing
Miranda et"al. 2022a), we focus on the discursive work of a corpus of documents that"encapsulates a particular issue’s
heterogeneous actors that"actively"shape the issue field"of discourse, utilizing topic modeling methods to identify and
AI, thereby keeping it vibrant and unsettled. Following these map themes across various actor groups. Subsequently, we
insights, we view the discursive work within issue fields as employ sentiment analysis to investigate how perspectives
 AI & SOCIETY

Fig. 1 Method pipeline flow-chart

on AI differ"among various actor groups. Hence, as visual- can even"be considered non-elite, given that some level of
ized in Fig."1, we combine topic modeling with sentiment domain-specific knowledge is needed to interact meaning-
analysis and qualitative interpretation, to reveal underlying fully with a"complex topic such"as AI. Table"1 provides a
patterns and trends in the AI discourse, providing a more summary of the included actors and respective data sources.
comprehensive understanding of the issue. In total, we analyzed 12,289 individual texts.
Politicians are responsible for laws and policy devel-
3.1 Data sources opment and, therefore, play a key role"in shaping the AI
discourse as the issue has gained prominence in political
We selected the period for our analysis spanning 2015 to discussions and regulations (Dwivedi et"al. 2021). With our
2022. This timeframe was"chosen because"the interest in AI interest in uncovering the varied nature of the issue field as
has increased significantly since 2015 (Fig."2). Moreover, it unfolds in the political domain, we opted for parliamen-
this selection ensures that our analysis primarly captures tary debate records as our data sources. This choice ensures
AI discourse" before generative AI began to dominate as we the inclusion of"both government and opposition politicians,
see the first texts on the topic emerging at the end of 2022. which we believe more accurately captures"the contested
We established our discourse sample with a focus"on nature of issue fields, rather than, for instance, governmental
diversity by including heterogeneous actor groups: politi- policy documents"drafted by actors with an interest in pre-
cians (parliamentarians in the"UK and Scotland), consultan- senting a unified stance on a given topic. In line with the rest
cies (high reputation firms), and lay experts (Reddit). These of our"data, we restrict our texts to English-language data
actor groups all represent different interests and target dif- sources to increase classification accuracy and, therefore,
ferent audiences. Although these actors do"not exhaustively choose the British and Scottish parliamentary speeches from
represent the AI discourse, we argue that"they are"all influen- the ParlSpeech v2 dataset (Rauh and Schwalbach 2020) and
tial in shaping the discourse by"spanning both elite and non- the ParlScot dataset (Braby and Fraser 2021). These two cor-
elite actors—to the extent that"actors within this discourse pora consist of 1,956,223 and 430,577 individual speeches,

Fig. 2 AI Google trend, the search term “Artificial Intelligence”

AI & SOCIETY

Table 1 Data sources

Groups Selection criteria Sampled actors Amount of text

Politicians Responsible for laws and policy setting Politicians elected to the parliament in UK 925 Parliament speeches (2015–2022)
around AI and Scotland
Consultancies Global management consultancies with a McKinsey, Capgemini, Boston Consul- 3891 documents from consultancies
high reputation that promote AI tancy Group, KPMG, Bain & Company (2015–2022)
Accenture Ernst & Young, Pricewater-
houseCoopers
Lay experts Largest Reddit forum for AI discussions Participants mostly consists of highly 7473 Reddit posts, additional 89,974
technically interested individuals but comments associated with the posts
also include non-elite and everyday (2015–2022)
actors who engage in online conversa-
tions and discussion about AI

respectively. We identify AI-related speeches by searching AI’s implications. Hence, while we observed that techni-
for at least one occurrence of" the AI keywords provided by cally interested individuals often"assume a lay expert role
Baruffialdi et"al. (2020a; b) (p. 86–89), leading to a total by offering advice based on personal experiences, we do
of 424 speeches included in our analyses. However, these not consider whether this advice"is reliable or effective for
two existing data sources only cover speeches until"until the others. Nevertheless, many participants"write like experts
end of 2019 and the beginning of 2021, respectively. To and are"treated as such within these forums (Pardo-Guerra
address this gap,"we"updated both data sources from the 2024). In addition, Reddit has become increasingly used in
official Hansa and Holyrood archives by searching for each computational methods research in recent years (Chipidza
of the keywords from Baruffialdi et"al. (2020a; b) in their et"al. 2022) due to its vast popularity with 52 million daily
built-in search engines and collected all relevant"text pieces. users (Huner and Suárez 2022). Examples of social science
This added an"additional 501 text pieces. research using Reddit have grown remarkably, spanning top-
Consultancies are pivotal actors in shaping and dissemi- ics from"technology perception—such as" electric vehicles
nating the meanings associated with emerging technologies, (Ruan and Lv 2022)—to the"identification of COVID-19
such as artificial intelligence (Elmholdt et"al., 2025;"Miranda conspiracy emergence (Shahsavari et"al. 2020). Reddit as
et"al. 2022a). Our analysis included reports from leading a source is interesting source"due to its structured format,
consultancy firms, reflecting their significant role in promot- where users organize posts within predefined sections (sub-
ing AI adoption and understanding. Specifically, the sample reddits). This classification and moderation help"reduce the
comprised reports from McKinsey & Company (1,415 docu- amount of “noise” usually seen in other"social media"com-
ments), Boston Consulting Group (617 documents), Ernst munities. We used posts from the r/artificial subreddit which
& Young (510 documents), Capgemini (447 documents), is the platform’s largest moderated AI-related space, with
Accenture (334 documents), Bain & Company (309 docu- around 165,000 subscribers, resulting in 7,473 Reddit posts
ments), KPMG (172 documents), and Pricewaterhouse- and 89,974 associated"comments.
Coopers (87 documents). In total, this study analyzed 3,891
consultancy-related documents. 3.2 Data pre-processing
Lay experts at Reddit represent public online discourse
about AI. Inspired by studies of online communities (Au In our analysis, parliamentary speeches and Reddit posts
and Eyal 2022; Berr 2025; Ritwick and Koljonen 2025), we were examined directly, with minimal filtering applied to
consider the Reddit community to consist of people who documents that were either"too short or too long. However,
enact a form of lay expertise understood as “a collection for consultancy texts, we employed extractive summari-
of hybrid knowledges and practices disseminated and uti- zation (Miller 2019) due to their typically longer format,
lized by non-credentialed people in a given issue domain.” which makes it challenging for an automated approach to
(Ritwick and Koljonen 2025, p. 2). Not all actors within capture the main points directly.1 We condensed these texts
the Reddit community enact a lay expert role. Some sim- into their three most central sentences using modern trans-
ply"search for answers to open questions. Yet, we agree with former-based language models that do not necessitate further
Au and Eyal (2022), who point out that the public or citizens
are often too broad as"categories for actors in online com-
munities, while specialists are too narrow. On Reddit, com- 1
In addition, most used transformer models have an upper limit of
mentators frequently combine publicly accessible knowledge tokens (words) that can be analyzed, which would be exceeded by
with personal perspectives, contributing to discussions about most consultancy reports.
 AI & SOCIETY

text pre-processing. To accomplish this, we first split the “Diagnosis”, “Data Protection Regulation”, “Data Ethics”.
texts into individual sentences and embedded them sepa- This approach facilitated a more intuitive interpretation of
rately using a sentence transformer model (SBERT, Reimers the topic content. In an online supplementary file, we offer
and Gurevych 2019). The summarization algorithm utilizes an overview of the topics identified"for our analysis.
these embeddings to pinpoint the longer text’s “core” while
assigning greater weight to sentences appearing towards the 3.4 Large language model-based topic
beginning, as they usually introduce the document’s topic. interpretation and aggregation
Extractive summarization ensures that the phrasing and
meaning of the text remain unaltered, as it directly"reuses To enhance our topic identification approach, we employed
sentences from the original document. hierarchical topic modeling capabilities within the BER-
Topic framework. This method allows us to understand
3.3 Topic identification the relationships between topics and identify potential sub-
themes within our corpora. The hierarchical structure was
While most research in the"social sciences that employs constructed by calculating cosine similarities between the
NLP methods for topic identification uses statistical topic c-TF-IDF representations of topics, followed by applying
modeling methods like Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), Ward’s linkage method to create a hierarchical clustering
we use a transformer-based approach called BERTopic, as structure. This approach helps reveal how different topics
explained by Grootendorst (2022). This approach uses docu- relate to each other and identifies potential merging oppor-
ment embedding techniques to capture a document’s context tunities while maintaining the interpretability of the results.
instead of just counting appearing words, which is common The hierarchical clustering process involved several steps.
in statistical Bag-of-Words (BoW) approaches. BERTopic First, we created a distance matrix based on the cosine simi-
has gained popularity as it can be adapted to various tasks larity between c-TF-IDF representations of each topic. We
and performs well in various settings, as demonstrated by then applied Ward’s linkage function to this matrix to model
Falkenberg et"al. (2022), who used it to identify a grow- the hierarchical structure. At each level of topic merging,
ing polarization in online discourse around climate change. we recalculated the c-TF-IDF representations by combin-
Hence, our approach involves:"text embedding techniques ing the underlying document-term matrices, ensuring that
that create vector representations of text documents, dimen- the resulting topic representations remained meaningful and
sionality reduction techniques to express these document interpretable.
embeddings in a lower dimensional space, clustering tech- To improve the interpretability of the hierarchical struc-
niques to identify topics represented by the documents, and ture, we integrated a novel approach using large language
a weighting-scheme to select keywords representing and models (LLM, specifically Llama3.3:70b and Claude 3.5
characterizing the topic. Following the recommendations of Sonnet) for topic labeling. This method, which builds upon
Grootendorst (2022), we use Sentence Bidirectional Encoder emerging literature on the use of LLMs in qualitative cod-
Representations from Transformers (SBERT) for document ing (e.g., Chew et"al. 2023), helped us move from keyword-
embeddings, Uniform Manifold Approximation and Pro- based topic representations to more meaningful thematic
jection (UMAP) for dimensionality reduction, Hierarchical descriptions. The LLM processed the keywords and context
Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise from each topic cluster to generate descriptive labels that
(HDBSCAN) for clustering, and Class-based TF-IDF (cTF- captured the semantic content while maintaining consistency
IDF) to rank keywords for the topic representation. with the hierarchical structure.
To enhance the interpretability of topics within the The resulting hierarchical topic structure provided three
specific context of the study, we extracted potential topic key advantages for our analysis. First, it allowed us to iden-
keywords from input documents to ensure a"focus on AI- tify broader themes that emerged across our different cor-
related issues. We accomplished this using a Named Entity pora (politicians, consultancy, and lay experts). Second,
Recognition (NER) model trained on the SciERC dataset, it helped us understand how specific sub-topics related to
which contains 500 scientific AI-related paper abstracts and these broader themes, providing a more nuanced view of
was developed by Luan et"al. (2018). Specifically, we uti- the discourse. Third, it facilitated the comparison of topic
lized the SciBERT model created by Beltagy et"al. (2019), structures across different actor groups by providing a stand-
which we fine-tuned on the NER task using the SciERC ardized framework for topic aggregation and interpretation.
dataset. By doing so, we generated keywords that helped us
identify themes and meaning contractions without requiring 3.5 Sentiment analysis
extensive domain knowledge across all covered discourses.
These keywords were described by combinations such as We also employed NLP techniques to determine the sen-
“Health”, “Healthcare”, “Health Service”, “Mental Health”, timents of our corpus documents. Instead of traditional
AI & SOCIETY

dictionary-based methods for sentiment analysis, we used a extract insights about the AI discourse, including potential
modern transformer-based approach to create a robust model controversies among actor groups,"and thus"examine AI as
that can be applied across different domains. Specifically, we an issue field.
used an automated sentiment analysis model trained on the
GoEmotion dataset (Demszky et"al. 2020), which includes
27 fine-grained emotions that can be identified in text frag-
ments. By computing emotional scores for all texts, we 4 Findings
identified and extracted examples for illustration and inter-
pretation, capturing more nuance in the various discourses 4.1 Diversity of AI discourses: topic analysis
as we detected emotional dimensions associated with AI.
To analyze the sentiments of Reddit posts, we examined Below we present the results of our topic models. We ran
the associated comments rather than the posts themselves separate topic models for each of our three corpora and used
to measure the discussion and response to a given piece of hierarchical clustering, guided by LLM feedback for topic
information introduced by a new post. labeling, to create comparable groups across models. This
clustering was then discussed by the authors and condensed
3.6 Qualitative evaluation into a generalized taxonomy.
Table"2 shows the color legends of the topics, which will
Finally, we supplemented the results of the topic modeling allow us assess the diversity within groups and the similarity
and sentiment analysis with qualitative evaluation and tex- in topics across groups. Each of the broader topics consists
tual interpretation to strengthen the insights that large textual of several sub-topics, as our modeling approach is hierarchi-
data analysis can provide (Aranda et"al. 2021; Munk et"al. cal. As such, the sub-topics use differing shades of the same
2022; Pedersen 2023). The computational models served to color corresponding to the color of the overall topic. For
generate search terms, which we further refined through sen- instance, the red topic-hierarchy signifies a Governance &
timent analysis, enhancing the depth of exploration, as well Ethics topic, with the three sub-topics: Security & Regula-
as through"qualitative methods. The computationally derived tion, Ethics & Safety, and Future & Philosophy."Figs."3, 4,
themes then formed a foundation for further qualitative and 5 showcase a refined view of the topic structures derived
interpretive text analysis to develop a nuanced understanding from LLM-labeled topic modeling, showing both the clus-
of the topic (Carlsen and Ralund 2022; Isfeldt et"al. 2022). tering patterns and the thematic relationships refined by the
Specifically, in our study, we have drawn inspiration from authors' insights.
this approach to ensure that the large-scale data analysis Among consultants, the dominant view is that"AI tech-
retains the interpretive depth of qualitative research"by inte- nology serves"as a driver for new business opportunities
grating additional qualitative dimensions. We used indica- and transformation. As illustrated in Fig."3, the core theme
tors provided by the sentiment analysis to retrieve exemplary revolves around AI implementation, encompassing approxi-
text fragments (e.g., texts about fear and excitement of AI mately 75% of the identified topics and"associated texts. This
technologies). Looking across our topic modeling, we chose includes AI adoption across various industries and specific
to zoom in on one area—AI in healthcare—as it emerged sectors, as well as the"augmentation and process automation
as a prevailing theme among politicians, consultants and within different business functions. The Digital Transforma-
lay experts (Figs."3, 4, 5) and appeared as a"high-stake con- tion topic group includes discussions on the broad adop-
cern"that sparked debates about clinical, financial, and ethi- tion and integration of AI across various business functions.
cal issues. Given that an issue field consists of heterogeneous The focus is less on the technical details of AI development
actors with divergent viewpoints on the same issues (Hoff- and more on how these advancements can be leveraged for
man 1999), we aimed to"maximize variation in the actors’ business transformation. The Industry Solutions topic group
discourses by choosing a topic that is"relatable to technical clusters discussions centered around concrete examples of
experts and laypersons alike. Focusing on"a more technical AI implementation within specific sectors. The core indus-
topic might not have"allowed us to engage with the fully tries highlighted include financial services (e.g., insurance
developed issue field since some actors may lack"technical and banking), manufacturing and healthcare. Across these
knowledge that"could prohibit their participation in shap- industries, we observe that"AI is discursively"constructed"as
ing the field around the given topic."However, this was not a consequential technology for the workforce and compa-
empirically the case for AI in healthcare, as it was strongly nies, but also as a lever for transforming work and facili-
present across different actor groups. We mapped how AI tating better customer experiences. Ethical concerns seem
in healthcare was debated with emotional sentiments, such relatively minor, and the focus is more on business transfor-
as excitement and fear. Hence, we combined unsupervised mation. The following quotes from consultancy firms in our
machine learning techniques with qualitative analysis to sample illustrate this perspective:
 AI & SOCIETY

Table 2 Color legend of topics used in the topic model visualizations

“We had the computer revolution, the smartphone rev- emphasizing its features and capabilities. As illustrated
olution, and the internet revolution, but AI will prob- in Fig."4, the analysis of lay expert data shows a rich dis-
ably be the biggest technological shift we have ever cussion on a broad range of technologies associated with
seen. It is time to seize the business opportunity that AI (e.g., computer vision, natural language processing,
automation analytics and AI bring. AI will reshape the speech and conversation) and detailed discourse related to
workforce and supercharge productivity.”. specific approaches (e.g., neural networks and deep learn-
“The need for some skills, such as technological as ing, as well as a variety of other machine learning frame-
well as social and emotional skills, will rise, even as works and tools). This reveals a sophisticated understand-
the demand for others, including physical and man- ing and a focus on the building blocks of AI, rather than
ual skills, will fall. These changes will require work- just its end-user implications. Beyond the technical, we
ers everywhere to deepen their existing skill sets or also find discussions related to application domains, such
acquire new ones. Companies, too, will need to rethink as core public service areas"like healthcare, education and
how work is organized within their organizations”. learning and emerging fields such as robotics, indicating
“AI is no longer a “nice to have” or a set of cool tools a strong"interest in topics where AI techniques may have
to impress management. AI and data strategies are an immediate and"tangible effect on individuals. While
becoming the very core of business, and all the while academic research, ethics, and philosophical concerns also
it’s becoming easier and cheaper to get your hands on account for about a quarter of our lay experts’ discussion
the technology. The time to act is now”. concerning AI—reflecting concerns about AI’s societal
impact beyond technical exploration—the majority of the
In contrast to the business discourse prevalent among
discourse centers on the technical abilities and feasibility
consultants, lay experts in online AI communities at
of AI, as illustrated in the following Reddit discussion
Reddit discursively"construct AI as a technical domain
excerpts:
AI & SOCIETY

Fig. 3 Semantic patterns for consultancies.

Fig. 4 Semantic patterns for lay experts

 AI & SOCIETY

Fig. 5 Semantic patterns for politicians

“I'm wondering if incorporating an ontology into the primary"focus is on aspects of interaction between some
decision-making process of an LLM would be benefi- more general technology features and society. The topic
cial. Are LLMs already implicitly generating ontolo- model reveals multiple clusters, including government and
gies in order to generate complex output?” policy concerns, industry applications, and ethical consid-
“Do you believe that ontologies could be useful in erations. AI is understood within a discourse of responsible
LLMs, or do you think that the nature of these models political action, where it necessitates"deliberation, collective
makes them unnecessary?” boundaries and robust regulatory frameworks. This is exem-
“Check Out This DeepMind’s New Language Model, plified by discussions on digital safety, ethics, and national
Chinchilla (70B Parameters), Which Significantly security. Furthermore, the topic model shows frequent"dis-
Outperforms Gopher (280B) and GPT-3 (175B) on a cussions around workforce training and education, recogniz-
Large Range of Downstream Evaluation Tasks” ing the potential for AI to disrupt the job market and neces-
User A: “Are Recent Changes to AI Really That sitate reskilling efforts. The advent of AI may imply new
Impressive? What Do You Think” industrial or geographical focuses, which has implications
User B (response): “The current state is less impres- for political economy and grand challenges. Such aspects
sive than the rate of change. Go install GPT-2 from a are exemplified in the following excerpts from politicians:
few years ago on your local machine and try to have a
“There are both potential benefits and risks, and we
long, rational conversation with it. Compare that with
cannot downplay either. What should be clear to eve-
what is publicly available right now. And remember
ryone, though, is that, in many ways, AI is already in
that public facing applications aren't the state of the
our lives and our homes, and it is here to stay”.
art. The hype can be ridiculous. But the trends are
“As artificial intelligence increasingly comes into the
worth paying attention to."
world of work, we can retrain and reskill people to take
the jobs of the future. Many people fear that AI will
Among politicians, the dominant discourse construct AI
just mean job losses. We need to ensure that alterna-
as a multifaceted societal issue (Fig."5). Within this broad
tive jobs are available, and that people are trained and
context, discussions of" specific technical features of AI
up-skilled to take them”.
remain limited. Specific technologies are being discussed
in approximately 30% of the topics identified. Instead,"the
AI & SOCIETY

Fig. 6 Aggregated sentiment across actor groups

4.2 Hopes and fears within AI discourses: sentiment to present themselves as" impartial advisors to companies
analysis and potential business partners. Politicians express the high-
est degree of positive sentiment, while lay experts dominate
Whereas the topic analysis reveals how AI is discur- in"the ambiguousness category, possibly due to their techni-
sively" constructed" differently across actor groups, our cally focused discussions, as revealed by our topic modeling.
second part of the analysis explores"positive and negative Finally, negative sentiment is roughly equally expressed by
sentiments such as hopes and fears related to the AI issue all three groups.
field. This provides a second dimension to examine how In Fig."7, we illustrate the individual emotions under-
actors engage in issue interpretation (Hoffman 1999) as they lying our aggregated categories, and we thus remove the
may not only address which topics should be emphasized, “neutral” category from our plot. Approval, disapproval,
but also the overall sentiment of the discussion and even annoyance, admiration, disappointment, and optimism
exhibit varying sentiments across sub-topics. Figures"6 and are the most pronounced non-neutral sentiments across
7 provide an overview of the prominence of a broad range actor groups. This indicates a balanced expression of
of sentiments as proposed by Demszky et"al. (2020). These emotions in quantity and type, with positive and negative
emotions can be aggregated into three categories: positive sentiments equally represented across groups. Generally
sentiment (admiration, amusement, approval, caring, desire, speaking, most sentiments are almost similarly distributed
excitement, gratitude, joy, love, optimism, pride, and relief), across actor groups. However, lay experts display a higher
ambiguous sentiment (confusion, curiosity, realization, and degree of curiosity, surprise, and confusion compared to
surprise), and negative sentiment (anger, annoyance, disap- other groups, signifying their more technical discussions
pointment, disapproval, disgust, embarrassment, fear, grief, of highly advanced approaches to AI and a greater"willing-
nervousness, remorse, and sadness). Furthermore, our algo- ness to pose questions in debate formats. Politicians tend
rithmic approach also found a category of neutral sentiment, to express higher approval, optimism and gratitude. The
where no dominant emotion is present. Figure"6 provides the latter can result from the commonly polite phrasing typical
aggregated categories, while Fig."7 provides the individual for the policy domain, whereas the former hints towards
emotions across all topics.
We generally see a dominance of neutral sentiments,
accounting for roughly half of the valence across actor 2
While (fiction) literature as well as personal conversations are often
groups,2 but it is particularly pronounced for consultancies. sentimentally loaded, factual and public documents generally tend to
This may reflect their business-mindedness—as they strive be formulated more neutral.
 AI & SOCIETY

Fig. 7 All sentiments by actor group

Fig. 8 Sentiment analysis: healthcare

an overall positive perspective focused on the potential 4.3 Healthcare as an example

opportunities of AI.
To deepen our sentiment analysis, we focus on an applica-
tion domain—AI in healthcare—which is a cross-cutting
AI & SOCIETY

theme among consultants, politicians, and lay experts (cf. were also raised concerning data privacy, transparency, and
Figures"3, 4, 5). Figure"8 shows a comparable plot to Fig."6, algorithmic biases. For instance, it was expressed that “when
where AI healthcare sentiments are aggregated to a posi- wrong data is fed into the algorithms, they also make the
tive, negative, and ambiguous categorization following the wrong decisions” (consultant). Table"3 provides additional
categorization by Demszky et"al. (2020). quotes to substantiate the different viewpoints on optimism
We observe similarities between the healthcare-specific and skepticism about AI in healthcare.
plot in Fig."8 and the across-top plot in Fig."6, suggesting Comparing our quantitative analyses with the quotes
that healthcare is a quite representative topic. For example, above, some interesting patterns emerge. The quotes illus-
politicians’ sentiments are also more favorable than those of trate substantial convergence across actor groups within the
other groups in the healthcare domain. The following quali- excitement and optimism sentiment, where specific themes
tative statements are illustrative of the excitement and opti- such as the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare are pre-
mism around AI in the healthcare domain: “Artificial Intel- sent across groups. The fear and nervousness quotes reflect a
ligence (AI) technologies can make a significant di"erence vagueness in describing the specific negative aspects of AI.
to the health and social care system, and most importantly This vagueness appears to be tied to broader discourses of
to patients” (politician); “AI has the potential to revolution- ethics and risk, whereas optimism focuses on more tangible
ize healthcare” (consultant), and “AI-powered devices not outcomes, such as reduced administrative burdens or accu-
only spot a likely tumor or bone fracture but also predict the rate disease prediction. Moreover, the actor groups appear to
course of an illness with some reliability for recommenda- differ in how they articulate their concerns. The consultancy
tions on what to do next” (lay expert at Reddit). In contrast quotes tend to emphasize potential harm to specific actors
to these dominating positive statements, more critical issues or units—such as organizations, patients, practitioners, and

Table 3 Additional quotes

Sentiments Actor groups Healthcare

Excitement, optimism Consultants “AI and machine learning technology in healthcare seem to expand faster than we can keep up. These
technologies help doctors make better treatment decisions, faster. They improve revenue cycle speed
and accuracy. They can make every aspect of the care journey safer, smarter, more equitable, and more
e"ective”
“AI can help remove or minimize time spent on routine, administrative tasks, which can take up to 70
percent of a healthcare practitioner’s time”
Lay experts “Have you guys looked into healthcare AI much? The concept of machine learning being incorporated
into healthcare is a fascinating idea to me as it will allow humans to inevitably be able to detect health
defects long before they become a problem”
“I was shocked at how well neural networks can classify Alzheimer's, Parkinson's schizophrenia, and
tumors. In many cases years/decades before the symptoms appear, allowing early treatment.”
Politicians “The introduction of artificial intelligence, particularly in diagnostics, can greatly increase the productiv-
ity of the NHS workforce”
“AI-driven tools have the potential to change and improve the way that health and adult social care ser-
vices are provided to people by improving the quality and efficiency of care”
“I seek to make a case for data-driven innovation and for how we can build back better if we harness for
healthcare the world-class skills we already have in Scotland”
Fear, nervousness Consultant “We think about the ethical implications of AI to ensure anything that we bring into our organisations not
only draws upon the benefits that this type of automation brings but also is done in a responsible way”
“At the same time, questions have been raised about the impact AI could have on patients, practitioners,
and health systems, and about its potential risks; there are ethical debates around how AI and the data
that underpins it should be used”
Lay experts “Good points about risks from AI accidents that industry and governments should seriously consider”
AI can’t fix our country’s terrible dietary habits. So long as we eat the way we do, we’re going to have
terrible obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other health problems. There’s also a growing body of
evidence to suggest diet is tied STRONGLY to mental health. AI mean only operate on the data it has—
which means we’ll put the bandaid on faster… i.e., prescribe meds for o" label purposes that really
don’t work. But wouldn’t it be better to NOT have to slap a bandaid on in the first place?
Politicians “The next challenge—the next revolution—will be the cyber-physical systems revolution, described as
the fourth industrial revolution. It is about big data, the internet of things, artificial intelligence and
bioengineering. It involves the concept of blurring our world with the technological world. Like all
technological developments, it o"ers both opportunities and challenge”
[Discussing the impact of AI and data] "Revealing that data may not be embarrassing for everyone, but it
could be life-destroying for someone."
 AI & SOCIETY

healthcare systems—seeking to construct AI within a dis- other actors. This aligns with prior studies documenting
course" of relatively"concrete"risks. In contrast, government the optimistic construction of AI (Milne 2020; Zeng et"al.
quotes seem to remain more abstract, focusing on AI’s soci- 2022; Korneeva et"al. 2023). However, our findings expand
etal and ethical implications. Finally, Reddit quotes suggest on this by showing that optimism, while present, varies in
a distinct perspective, raising concerns that AI might divert its expression and abstraction across groups.
attention from perceived fundamental issues, such as poor For instance, politicians tend to discuss AI in broad,
dietary habits or systemic health problems. Overall, the dif- abstract terms, constructing it as a societal issue requir-
ferences in how negative sentiments are expressed under- ing collective governance and policy intervention. This
line the heterogeneity of the AI issue field. While optimism abstraction allows them to address societal challenges and
seems to converge on specific benefits across groups, articu- opportunities broadly but often at the expense of engaging
lating concerns about AI diverges, reflecting varied priorities with technical specifics. In contrast, lay experts in Reddit
and perspectives among actor groups. communities engage with AI as a technical issue, focusing
Our mixed method approach, therefore, allows us to make on granular topics such as machine learning models, natu-
an essential point about issue fields in the context of"AI. Our ral language processing, and application domains. This
quantitative analysis of negative sentiment did not show dif- lack of abstraction among lay experts may reflect their
ferences between actor groups, while the positive sentiment primary interest in technical feasibility rather than societal
analysis showed that politicians were more positive. In the impacts. The gap between these two perspectives illus-
qualitative study, observing the heterogeneities of the issue trates how different actor groups emphasize distinct facets
field in the negative sentiment was comparatively more com- of AI, which shapes the broader discourse. As such, our
plex than in the positive sentiment. This complexity reflects analysis of AI as an issue field shows the multifaceted way
the diversity of the issue field in two ways: first, through heterogeneous actors infuse meaning into the technology.
differing qualitative discourses across topics, and second, Hence, we did not see a consensual understanding of AI
through varying levels of discourse intensity as measured but rather how competing interests shaped the discourse
in our quantitative sentiment analysis. Without combining (Wooten and Hoffman 2017).
qualitative and quantitative approaches, we would have been The abstraction we observed may, however, also create
unable to capture the full heterogeneity of the actors’ posi- challenges for instance regarding ethical specificity. The
tions within the field. abstraction in political discourse, while useful for address-
ing overarching concerns, risks obscuring critical ethical and
regulatory considerations. For example, ethical concerns
5 Discussion about AI could involve its design, algorithmic decisions, or
contextual applications. Politicians’ lack of specificity may
The current literature has stressed the importance of dis- hinder their ability to engage with such important issues.
courses surrounding emerging technologies such as AI Moreover, the ongoing re-labeling of existing technologies
(Gal et"al. 2022; Miranda et"al. 2022a; Dahabiyeh and Con- as “AI” and the associated hype (Milne 2020) could further
stantinides 2022). However, we lack knowledge about the complicate efforts to address these concerns, both techni-
distributed efforts of meaning construction and the con- cally and politically. Lay experts provide a counterpoint to
troversies that shape opportunities for action. Against this this political abstraction by offering detailed and technically
backdrop, we adopted an issue field perspective (Hoffman focused discussions. However, their influence may be limited
1999; Buchanan et"al. 2022) and used computational meth- by their lack of institutional backing or formal expertise.
ods to analyze AI discourses. Our findings highlight how Despite this, lay experts play a role in keeping the discourse
AI is approached differently across heterogeneous actors, vibrant and diverse, particularly by questioning assumptions
revealing its contested nature and the diversity in both topics and exploring technical boundaries. This grassroots engage-
and sentiments. In the following, we outline contributions to ment offers insights into the public’s perception of AI and
the literature on AI discourses and the use of computational its technical potential. Consultants’ discourse represents a
analysis to advance insights in this domain. blend of optimism and neutrality. Their emphasis on AI as
a transformative business tool highlights opportunities for
5.1 Co-existing discourses about AI productivity and innovation while downplaying ethical or
societal risks. This strategic framing allows consultancies to
Our analysis demonstrates the multiplicity of meanings position themselves as pragmatic advisors, offering solutions
ascribed to AI and the debates surrounding its implica- while maintaining credibility. Yet, this neutrality may also
tions. These co-existing discourses include optimistic reflect a reluctance to engage deeply with contentious issues,
rhetoric, particularly prominent among politicians, and focusing instead on business-driven narratives.
more critical or technically detailed perspectives from
AI & SOCIETY

Our sentiment analysis advances the above further by it does not constitute a method of evaluation in itself, our
revealing differences in how actors construct AI emotion- findings"resonate with"already existing literature. Zeng et"al.
ally. Politicians exhibit a higher degree of positive senti- (2022) as well as Ossewaarde and Gulenc (2020) find highly
ment, focusing on AI’s societal benefits and opportunities. positive discourse around social media from politicians—a
Lay experts, on the other hand, display more curiosity and pattern which we also uncovered using algorithmic meth-
ambiguity, reflecting their exploratory and technically ods. Furthermore, the fact that our two other actor groups
focused engagement. Consultants maintain a neutral tone, are categorized as being more ambivalent overall suggests
aligning with their role as facilitators of business transfor- that our algorithmic approach can meaningfully capture vari-
mation. Hence, the many actors who partake in shaping the ation in valence. While prior research found actor groups
AI discourse—including the hopes and fears of AI—help with high degrees of resemblance in valence, our ability to
keep the issue field unsettled and vibrant. This underscores detect variance between groups suggests that those resem-
the emerging state of AI as becoming both a problem and blances we find between other groups are not merely a result
a solution to multiple goals. By doing so, our findings sup- of measurement error.
port Zietsma et"al.’s (2017) concept of an interstitial issue Our study also shows the value of supplementing compu-
field, where overlapping concerns from diverse fields remain tational quantitative methods with qualitative analysis (Han-
actively debated. Whereas existing studies on the AI dis- nigan et"al. 2019; Aranda et"al. 2021). We used quantitative
course tend to focus on individual actors, such as politicians insights as a starting point for the qualitative analysis. We
(Ossewaarde and Gulenc 2020) or news media (Korneeva drew insights from that rather than as a direct interpreta-
et"al. 2023), we have included a broader range of actors to tion of the topic modeling or sentiment analysis procedure.
address the distributed effort of meaning constructions about By implication, our study points to the importance of tak-
AI. ing quantitative and qualitative perspectives into account
in computational methods. Hence, we suggest that rather
5.2 The value of computational methods than considering computational methods as a means for
in analyzing AI discourses automating qualitative text analysis, additional qualitative
engagement is needed, and the computational output may
Our study contributes new insights into how techniques stimulate qualitative imagination. This point echoes discus-
from NLP and machine learning can strengthen research sions concerning AI in other empirical settings and how
on discourses and meaning-related topics"in the context of computational methodological may “augment” epistemic
emerging digital technologies (Miranda et"al. 2022a; Pollock practices (Lebovitz et"al. 2022).
and Williams 2010). In our computational-driven analysis
of AI discourses, we used a novel combination of automated 5.3 Implications for future research and practice
text summarization, embedding, and clustering techniques
to identify granular emergent and persistent themes in a Although we have included rich data from heterogenous
large data set. The approach extends the BERTopic meth- actors (politicians, consultancy, lay experts) to investigate
odology proposed by Grootendorst (2022). The extension the AI discourse, data from other actor groups could have
lies mainly in using a fine-tuned Named Entity Recogni- further deepened our analysis. For instance, news media,
tion (NER) model on the dataset made available by Beltagy research institutions, and corporations represent other actors
et"al. (2019) that identifies relevant, expressive keywords and likely to shape discourses of emerging technology such as AI
phrases that help us describe individual meaning construc- (Miranda et"al. 2022a). Another limitation is the use of Red-
tion themes. A further feature is the addition of sentiment dit data as an expression of lay experts. We find it likely that
analysis to improve understanding of identified semantic most of the people engaging in discussion on the largest AI
themes. In doing so, we utilized a pipeline model, which forum on Reddit"can be considered as enacting"lay expertise,
in its structure is inspired by Goldenstein and Poschmann yet, these actors abilities and experience remains"difficult for
(2019) and Aranda et"al., (2021) but introduces state-of-the- us to understand"given that Reddit is essentially an anony-
art algorithms, in part based on transformer architectures mous platform. Thus, there may be a broader selection of
for most steps. The performance of these algorithms has individuals present than what we expect, and there may be
been proven in their respective domains of research and in venues to better get in contact with lay experts than through
practice, where they have been adopted in different technol- a social media site. In addition, we limited the analysis to
ogy solutions. There is emerging evidence of the efficacy two parliaments from native English language countries to
of BERTopic, which our approach builds upon when used provide a consistent sample in terms of the terminology
to understand social media data (Egger and Yu 2022), but used but also the context of the discourse. This limits our
a method evaluation against more established method com- data foundation. Future research should increase the scope
binations are still to be explored in future research. While of documents while introducing a comparative perspective
 AI & SOCIETY

across different parliaments within more heterogeneous con- Data availability Data is available by request.
texts. Moreover, future studies should examine the discourse
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri-
of generative AI that since OpenAI released ChatGPT by bution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adapta-
November 2022 has “triggered significant fuss, reflections tion, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
and contestations across various fields and disciplines” as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source,
(Kulkarni et"al. 2024, p. 6). Hence, such studies may sup- provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes
were made. The images or other third party material in this article are
plement, support, or challenge the findings from our research included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated
that ended by 2022. otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in
While our approach leverages computational methods for the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not
systematic exploration of large-scale data, we remain mind- permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will
need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a
ful that computational methods should support rather than copy of this licence, visit [Link]
replace careful qualitative analysis. Following frameworks
for abductive analysis (Timmermans and Tavory 2012), we
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