“Artificial Intelligence”: The Associative Field of Journalism Students

Artificial Intelligence today can be called one of the most discussed phenomena. Meanwhile, the boundaries of this term are extremely broad and blurred. Such breadth of meaning may largely be due to diverse interpretation of the concept in the media. The media creates an ambivalent and unstable attitude towards the phenomenon in the perception of the audience. In this regard, it seems important to determine the associative field of the term that currently exists in the perception of journalism students who broadcast and will broadcast their own associations to consumers of media content. The objective of the study is to identify the characteristics of the associative field of the term “artificial intelligence”, formed by student journalists at Russian universities. In our study we define the associative field of the term based on an analysis of associations of 380 students majoring in “Journalism”, “Television”, “Media Communications,” and “Advertising and Public Relations” in three universities in the country (MSU named after M.V. Lomonosov, FEFU and TSU named after G.R. Derzhavin). The time frame of the study is December 2023. Associations are recorded based on the following questions: “What word do you associate with “Artificial Intelligence?”, “What animal do you associate with “Artificial Intelligence?”, “What plant do you associate with “Artificial Intelligence?”, “What color do you associate with “Artificial Intelligence?”, “Which country do you associate with “Artificial Intelligence?”, “What emotion do you associate with “Artificial Intelligence?”, “Which famous person do you associate with “Artificial Intelligence?” “If you had the opportunity to give Artificial Intelligence a name, what would you choose?” Associations characteristic of students of all three universities are identified, and an attempt is made to identify differences in the formation of the associative field of students from different universities.