Abstract

As journalism has grappled with the potentials and boundaries of AI within the industry, journalists have produced plentiful articles detailing experimentation and potential consequences of AI-driven journalism (see, Peiser, 2019 Peiser, J. 2019, February 5. “The Rise of the Robot Reporter.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/business/media/artificial-intelligence-journalism-robots.html [Google Scholar]; GPT-33, 2020 GPT-3. 2020, September 8. “A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet human?” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3 [Google Scholar]). Accordingly, this article analyzes media coverage (N = 95 articles) of AI in journalism over a 5-year period, starting in 2016 and ending in 2020, to examine prominent themes related to uses, roles, and concerns regarding AI in the newsroom. We sample coverage from 20 US and UK news media outlets representing a diversity of media with regards to media type and partisan leaning. We employ a thematic analysis on the media coverage of AI as it relates specifically to its use and application in journalism. Our exploration uncovers a tension between the industry and profession of journalism in highlighting the hopes and pitfalls of AI. It also allows for a discussion on assessing the place of AI in news making, especially with regard to the economic and contextual complexity in which news stories operate and the normative ideals of journalism in the digital era.

摘要

随着新闻业努力应对人工智能在行业内的潜力和边界，记者们撰写了大量文章，详细介绍了人工智能驱动的新闻业的实验和潜在后果（参见 Peiser，2019 年 Peiser, J. 2019 年，2 月 5 日。“机器人记者的崛起”。纽约时报。https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/business/media/artificial-intelligence-journalism-robots.html [谷歌学术]；GPT-33,2020GPT-3。2020 年9 月 8 日。”一个机器人写下了整篇文章。你还怕人吗？守护者。https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3 [谷歌学术]）。据此，本文分析了媒体报道（N = 95 篇文章）在 5 年期间（从 2016 年到 2020 年结束）研究 AI 在新闻业中的应用，以研究与 AI 在新闻编辑室中的使用、角色和担忧相关的突出主题。我们对 20 家美国和英国新闻媒体的报道进行了抽样，代表了媒体类型和党派倾向的多样性。我们对 AI 的媒体报道进行了专题分析，因为它特别涉及到它在新闻业中的使用和应用。我们的探索揭示了行业和新闻专业之间在突出人工智能的希望和陷阱方面的紧张关系。它还允许讨论评估人工智能在新闻制作中的位置，特别是关于新闻故事运作的经济和背景复杂性以及数字时代新闻业的规范理想。