Sovereign Future or Distant Spectacle? A Comparative Content Analysis of Artificial Intelligence Coverage in Pakistan’s English and Urdu Press after the National AI Policy 2025

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a pivotal element in the state's policies, business strategies, and daily operations in Pakistan. Since the National AI policy was accepted in July 2025, the press has become an important space for negotiations around the definition of AI. Based on framing theory and agenda-setting theory, and sociotechnical imaginaries, this exploratory study analyzes the national dailies in English and Urdu to understand how they have framed AI in the first year of policy. Framing devices were qualitatively analysed in conjunction with a localised ten-frame codebook for a quantitative content analysis of 53 articles in 11 local newspapers. National development and sovereignty were the dominant frame, followed by misinformation and deepfakes, and economic opportunity. The risk-oriented frames outnumbered the opportunity-oriented ones, as is more common in the Global South, and regulation and ethics seemed to be represented primarily in the English-language commentary. Words were balanced for tone in both languages. The sources were dominated by the government officials, with few ordinary citizens present. The greatest difference lay in the concept of proximity, English newspapers transformed AI into a national policy issue, while Urdu newspapers mostly treated it as a global war spectacle, a celebrity and moral crisis, and only Urdu newspapers used a religious lens to discuss AI. This study provides the first English–Urdu comparative analysis of AI coverage in Pakistan and its relevance for the areas of AI literacy and inclusive technology governance.