This study examines stakeholder attitudes—derived from emotional expressions Van Kleef et al., (Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(4), 1124–1142. 2015)—toward ChatGPT’s use in U.S. higher education through a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of 984 online news articles. The study’s findings highlight the following four primary emotions: concern, confidence, scary, and grappling. Concerns focus on academic integrity, misinformation, bias, privacy breaches, academic achievement, and competition introduced by ChatGPT. Confidence stems from stakeholders’ belief that ChatGPT can enhance teaching, improve academic success, reshape higher education, and foster collaboration. Scary reflects the divided perception of ChatGPT as a double-edged sword, with praise for its transformational power balanced by concerns about its disruptive potential. Grappling highlights the ongoing effort to navigate rapid changes, balancing benefits against challenges while addressing ethical and systemic critiques. Three discursive strategies aid in identifying these emotional expressions: predication, which presents ChatGPT as either a transformative tool or a source of ethical and practical risk; argumentation, which provides evidence that justifies or opposes its use; and intensification/mitigation, which stresses hazards and constraints and, in turn, tempers optimism and confidence. Ultimately, this study provides valuable insight and delineates some of the implications of ChatGPT’s use in higher education for public policy, higher education practices, and technological integration.
