Governing diversity through AI: DEI and procedural trust in public service media

Abstract

Public service media are adopting artificial intelligence at a moment when diversity, equity and inclusion policies are increasingly politicised. Drawing on comparative qualitative research in the United Kingdom and Australia, this article examines how AI is embedded within Public Service Media governance and platformised audience infrastructures. We argue that AI operates not merely as a technical tool but as a cultural and institutional logic through which diversity, risk and legitimacy are reconfigured. In this shift, trust in diversity moves from relational practices grounded in representation and accountability toward procedural confidence embedded in automated systems, standards and compliance regimes. We conceptualise this transformation as the rise of <i>procedural trust</i>: a reorganisation of institutional legitimacy through technical infrastructures rather than social relations. Our thematic analysis shows how platform capitalism reshapes public service media by depoliticising diversity and redistributing responsibility across governance systems, with significant implications for democratic legitimacy.