Artificial Intelligence in News Media: Current Perceptions and Future Outlook

In recent years, news media has been greatly disrupted by the potential of technologically driven approaches in the creation, production, and distribution of news products and services. Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged from the realm of science fiction and has become a very real tool that can aid society in addressing many issues, including the challenges faced by the news industry. The ubiquity of computing has become apparent and has demonstrated the different approaches that can be achieved using AI. We analyzed the news industry’s AI adoption based on the seven subfields of AI: (i) machine learning; (ii) computer vision (CV); (iii) speech recognition; (iv) natural language processing (NLP); (v) planning, scheduling, and optimization; (vi) expert systems; and (vii) robotics. Our findings suggest that three subfields are being developed more in the news media: machine learning, computer vision, and planning, scheduling, and optimization. Other areas have not been fully deployed in the journalistic field. Most AI news projects rely on funds from tech companies such as Google. This limits AI’s potential to a small number of players in the news industry. We made conclusions by providing examples of how these subfields are being developed in journalism and presented an agenda for future research.

Artificial Intelligence in News Media: Current Perceptions and Future Outlook

In recent years, news media has been greatly disrupted by the potential of technologically driven approaches in the creation, production, and distribution of news products and services. Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged from the realm of science fiction and has become a very real tool that can aid society in addressing many issues, including the challenges faced by the news industry. The ubiquity of computing has become apparent and has demonstrated the different approaches that can be achieved using AI. We analyzed the news industry’s AI adoption based on the seven subfields of AI: (i) machine learning; (ii) computer vision (CV); (iii) speech recognition; (iv) natural language processing (NLP); (v) planning, scheduling, and optimization; (vi) expert systems; and (vii) robotics. Our findings suggest that three subfields are being developed more in the news media: machine learning, computer vision, as well as planning, scheduling, and optimization. Other areas have not been fully deployed in the journalistic field. Most AI news projects rely on funds from tech companies such as Google. This limits AI’s potential to a small number of players in the news industry. We make conclusions by providing examples of how these subfields are being developed in journalism and present an agenda for future research.

Covid-19: La brecha (digital) educativa a través de la prensa

La situación socio-sanitaria ocasionada por la COVID-19 ha implicado la clausura de los centros educativos forzando a la población escolar a continuar su proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de forma virtual. Esta situación ha puesto en evidencia la brecha digital existente entre los escolares, una realidad que ha aflorado en toda su magnitud para convertirse en objeto y tema de debate en el ámbito periodístico. Este trabajo tiene por objetivo describir el alcance de la brecha digital en el ámbito educativo y sus consecuencias, así como las posibles soluciones a corto y largo plazo. La metodología elegida es de carácter cualitativo apoyada en el análisis de contenido, en la que se exploran y revisan publicaciones de prensa generalista española en el primer mes de confinamiento, tanto de ámbito nacional como autonómico. Los resultados muestran que la prensa aborda el desequilibrio y desigualdad social respecto al acceso a la información y las dificultades consecuentes para acceder a la modalidad online, se observa un claro interés por la brecha digital, principalmente de acceso a internet, como una más de las dificultades en entornos socio-económicos vulnerables para acceder a la educación en igualdad de condiciones. Como conclusión cabe destacar que la pandemia, a través de la prensa generalista, ha incrementado la visibilidad de una situación ya existente: la desigualdad digital. Una desigualdad que favorece la exclusión en una sociedad que se muestra eminentemente tecnológica. The socio-sanitary situation caused by COVID-19 has implied the closure of educational centers, forcing the school population to continue their teaching-learning process virtually. This situation has highlighted the existing digital divide between schoolchildren, a reality that has emerged in all its magnitude to become an object and topic of debate in the journalistic field. This work aims to describe the scope of the digital divide in education and its consequences, as well as possible solutions in the short and long term. The chosen methodology is of a qualitative nature supported by content analysis, in which general Spanish press publications are explored and reviewed in the first month of confinement, both nationally and regionally. The results show that the press addresses the social imbalance and inequality regarding access to information and the consequent difficulties in accessing the online modality, there is a clear interest in the digital divide, mainly internet access, as one more of the Difficulties in vulnerable socio-economic environments to access education under equal conditions. In conclusion, it should be noted that the pandemic, through the generalist press, has increased the visibility of an already existing situation: digital inequality, which favors exclusion in a society that is eminently technological

Kurdish women and TV journalism in Iraqi Kurdistan: Experiences and strategies

Few studies on female TV journalists in the Middle East have been conducted. Neither have Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts been used to analyse women journalists’ experiences of their professional practice and their strategies for navigating a male-dominated media world in the Middle East. For this unique study, ten Kurdish women journalists that work for six different TV stations in Iraqi Kurdistan were interviewed. Informed by different forms of capital, the thematic analysis revealed four themes that capture the respondents’ experiences and strategies: coping with perceptions of pretty dolls and honorary men; coping with the threat of violence and a bad reputation; coping with the gendered distribution of news assignments; and tackling glass ceilings and unwritten rules. A particularly interesting result of the study was that while the strategies range from proclaiming any news hard news to openly defying orders from the managers, and to claiming that one’s ability to advance depends on having a strong personality, the focus is consistently on individualistic survival strategies. When masculinity and male norms still dominate the contents of symbolic capital, it may result in seemingly counterproductive practices such as the lack of a distinct ‘we’ feeling among women journalists. For women journalists, the cost of transforming their cultural and social capital into symbolic capital that is effective in the journalistic field is affected by both the journalistic field and the society at large, which creates contextually bound obstacles to women journalists in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Artificial Intelligence in News Media: Current Perceptions and Future Outlook

In recent years, news media have been hugely disrupted by the potential of technological-driven approaches in the creation, production, and distribution of news products and services. Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged from the realm of science fiction and has become a very real tool that can aid society in addressing many issues, including the challenges faced by the news industry. The ubiquity of computing has become apparent and has shown the different approaches that can be achieved using AI. We analyzed the news industry AI adoption based on the seven subfields emanated from AI: (i) machine learning; (ii) computer vision (CV); (iii) speech recognition; (iv) natural language processing (NLP); (v) planning, scheduling, and optimization; (vi) expert systems; and (vii) robotics. Our findings suggest that three subfields are being more developed in the news media: machine learning, planning, scheduling & optimization, and computer vision. Other areas are still not fully deployed in the journalistic field. Most of the AI news projects rely on funds from tech companies, such as Google. This limits the potential of AI in the news industry to a small number of players. We conclude by providing examples of how these subfields are being developed in journalism and present an agenda for future research.

LEAVING HOME TO COME HOME: REBUILDING JOURNALISTIC GATE-KEEPING ONE FACT AT A TIME

Confusion about modern post-publication fact-checking is dissipating as the practise nears its 20th anniversary in the United States (where it began in earnest), and misinformation settles as a resistant and sometimes deadly drag on reality. But a nuanced analysis of fact-checking’s role in and on the journalistic field (Bourdieu, 1993, 1998; Benson & Neveu, 2010) is troubled by such independent characterizations of post hoc claim verification as: a revolt against journalism; a professional or social reform movement; a new genre; an entrepreneurial exercise; a status-seeking ploy; and/or a psychologically ineffective or damaging reinforcement of falsehoods. Given that accuracy is an ethical requirement of normative journalism and the defining characteristic of ‘news’( hence the political duplicity of the oxymoronic term, ‘fake news’), the birth of independent fact-checking troubles the practice of journalism and, by proxy, political knowledge, and can thus also be read as critique of the field writ large. While gatekeeping (Lewin, 1947) is assumed dead, and gate-watching (Bruns, 2003) on life support, modern fact-checkers are nevertheless culling and privileging information, while simultaneously adjudicating and assigning blame for public speech, which traditional ‘neutral’ journalism avoids. Using both both academic and journalistic qualitative and quantitative interview tools, and framed by field, gatekeeping/watching, and discourse theories (thus emulating the journalistic-academic hybrid model deployed in fact-checking), I examine the largely unexplored area of journalistic re-entrenchment and introduce the reverse-gate-keeping theory of ‘information corralling’ in the era of escalating misinformation.

Reseña de Sommer, John Marcus. 2020. English and French Online Comments. A Text Linguistic Comparison of Popular Science Magazines. Berlin: Peter Lang. pp. 317.

This book approaches a linguistic study of the popular sciences magazines National Geographic, Discover, Sciences et Avenir and GEO from a very original perspective, since the author aims to describe the changes within the genre profiles of the magazines and the differences and similarities between their journalistic cultures. More specifically, since nowadays we live in a world in which social networks are playing an increasingly important role in the journalistic field (Jiménez Cano, 2017), the author focuses on the communicative practices of the readers of these magazines in two languages (French and English) and three platforms (Facebook, Twitter and Magazine-Website) in their print and online versions...