AI and High-Quality Journalism: A New Vision Paper by MediaFutures

Researchers and industry partners at MediaFutures have published a vision paper exploring AI’s potential to enhance high-quality journalism. The authors discuss how artificial intelligence can be applied at every stage of the journalistic value chain, supporting more trustworthy content for consumers.

The media industry has faced significant challenges in the past two decades, with daunting trends such as growing distrust towards mainstream media, dwindling revenues from advertising and subscription sales, as well as the proliferation of fake news.

These developments have exerted immense pressure on journalists, editors, and newsrooms, while also emphasizing the importance of reliable and high-quality journalism.

Against this backdrop, there has been a growing interest in how artificial intelligence technology could be used to leverage journalism, and support media outlets in counterbalancing misinformation and mitigating polarization.

Our researchers and industry partners at MediaFutures have recently published a vision paper on the subject.

Trustworthy journalism through AI

AI integration has been robust and ubiquitous across various industries, including the media sector.

Journalists and newsrooms have eagerly embraced AI to streamline repetitive and laborious tasks. Furthermore, AI has emerged as a promising solution to tackle some of the biggest societal challenges of our time. This includes public’s declining trust in the news.

Trust, as emphasized by Professor Andreas L. Opdahl at MediaFutures, is a key factor that influences individuals’ engagement with news, and a quality news production plays a pivotal role in establishing and fostering media credibility among consumers.  

Opdahl, in collaboration with Bjørnar Tessem, Doc-Tien Dang-Nguyen, Enrico Motta, Vinay Setty, Eivind Throndsen, Are Tverberg and Christoph Trattner, has published a visionary paper that places explicit emphasis on trustworthiness. “We perceive trustworthiness as a paramount principle for consumers and a central challenge faced by newsrooms today. Our vision revolves around this very subject matter, with the overarching objective of contributing to the AI for Good initiative”.

The paper outlines how AI can be integrated into every facet of the journalistic value chain, which involves the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information, to increase trust.

 In their work, the authors review the central problems of trustworthy information gathering and assessment, as well aschallenges related to content creation and news presentation. They further discuss related AI techniques, potential AI opportunities and risks for each problem area.

“Many of our proposed solutions revolve around enhancing journalists’ efficiency. This includes automating tasks such as collecting and preparing background information, suggesting sources, and freeing journalists from time-consuming verification and fact-checking tasks. We also explore the use of AI to facilitate collaboration within newsrooms, by identifying journalists working on similar or related stories and forming teams with complementary backgrounds and skills,” explains Opdahl.

To access the vision paper, click here.

Image credit: LinkedIn.