ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Science and Environmental Communication
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1640957
Expertise and Emotion: How Online Opinion Leaders Shape Public Perceptions of AI --among university students in China
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Journalism and Communciation, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China
- 2Honors College, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China
- 3Key Laboratory ofBrain-Machine Intelligence for Information Behavior, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China
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The development of AI technology has triggered heated discussions on social media. As key users in social media, online opinion leaders' emotional power has exhibited the effect of "emotion setting" and influenced user's perception of AI. Moreover, the identity of online opinion leaders as "experts" always plays an important role in emotional communication. Based on these, this study conducts an experiment (N = 102) to examine the impact of online opinion leaders' expert credibility and emotional arousal level on users' perception of AI technology. The study finds that: Based on negative tone, higher expert credibility leaders lead participants to view AI technology as more useful and easier to use. Similarly, leaders with higher emotional arousal can strengthen the perceptions. Among high-expert credibility leaders, the interaction between arousal and credibility significantly impacts both perceived ease of use (PEOU) and perceived usefulness (PU). Among low-expert credibility leaders, the interaction impacts PU rather than PEOU. Additionally, AI anxiety mediates the relationship between arousal level and perception, with expert credibility degree as a moderating variable. Emotional arousal significantly influences AI anxiety, regardless of online opinion leaders' expert credibility degree. This study will help us understand how online opinion leaders contribute to the establishment of sociotechnical imaginaries in the era of AI's rapid development.
Keywords: Online opinion leader, Expert credibility, AI anxiety, emotional communication, Perception
Received: 04 Jun 2025; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Jiang, Deng and Tan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Weijia Deng, Honors College, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China
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