Social Robotics in Eastern and Western Newspapers: China and (Even) Japan are Optimistic

To look into the assumed difference between East and West in acceptance and use of robots, we performed a content analysis on 120 papers about social robots in two Asian-English (China Daily and The Japan Times) and two Western-English newspapers (The Guardian and New York Times) written between 2009 and 2018. From these papers, we drew a number of statements (N=118). We analyzed tone of voice (TOV) as well as the positive or negative framing of the consequences of the implementation of social robots in society, economy, health, and safety. Intercoder reliability was>0.7, according to Krippendorff’s α-reliability. Western newspapers presented significantly more negative social frames, negative fairness-and-equality frames, and negative safety-and-health frames than did Eastern papers, which presented significantly more positive economic frames than did Western papers. Western newspapers expected more negative social, health, safety, and equality issues than did the East. The West anticipated little economic benefit. The East expected little harm to society, safety, health, and equality but rather foresaw beneficial economic outcomes.