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Artificial intelligence (AI) is already integrated into news production strategies in some media outlets. Recently, generative AIs such as ChatGPT and others have demonstrated their ability to enhance productivity in content production tasks, raising the question of how journalism faculties can address this new technology. This paper presents an academic study on the application of AI in higher communication studies. The study involved 4 in-depth interviews and 28 semi-structured interviews with university lecturers and researchers. The findings confirm varying degrees of convergence and divergence on different aspects of the technology, including the integration of AI in communication faculties, student training in AI usage, the introduction of AI and journalism as a subject area, and the potential uses of AI in news production and consumption. Additionally, this paper proposes a comprehensive training program on AI and journalism, focusing on its foundations, technical competencies and ethical considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper makes an important contribution to comparative research by examining data journalism in Spain and Austria. This paper examines the practice of data journalism from a triple perspective: (a) the common features of day-to-day work, (b) the organizational structure and the role of the teams in newsrooms, and (c) the obstacles to and the future of data-driven reporting. Results from content analysis of data-driven news stories in El país and Der standard (N = 136) show differences and similarities in the covered topics, sources, narrative style, visualizations, interactive functions, and levels of transparency. Interestingly, only 36.8% of the analyzed news stories correspond to the normative expectations of transparency by incorporating both sources and methodological details. While the Spanish newspaper shows significantly higher levels of transparency compared with the Austrian newspaper, both newspapers perform very similarly when it comes to providing access to raw data, which was the case in only every fifth news story analyzed. Findings from focused interviews with the heads of data journalism teams deliver interesting insights into specific challenges that each news outlet is facing when creating day-to-day data-driven news stories. This research confirms the relevance that data journalism has achieved in countries such as Spain and demonstrates the effort of journalists in countries without access to information and transparency laws to create data-driven stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to foster the debate on Media Literacy (ML) projects with a focus on disinformation. We analyse initiatives carried out locally in Portugal, considering the principles of ML, the necessary development of skills and competences, as well as the importance of the journalistic action and the consequences of platformization on professional practices. Mixed methods are applied to collect and analyse quali-quantitative data from ML projects and trainings involving multiple stakeholders. Inquiring three independent samples (editors-in-chief, journalists trained in ML, teachers trained by journalists in ML) the research questions address the importance of journalists' participation in ML within different roles, as well as the training quality and projects' assessment. Findings show a lack of specialised knowledge, practical tools, and continuous training as well the need for more tailor-made programs and evaluation resources that allow for the creation and promotion of more effective ML training programs. This contribution is therefore two-folded: a) it aims to enhance the operational aspects of media training in the field, based on a continuous improvement logic and b) it explores a specific evaluative example on how the feedback from training can help improve research efforts in the media literacy field. Conclusions systematise the assumptions, stemming from an articulation of ML stakeholders' perspectives, that guide the implementation, improvement, and assessment of training: collaboration, continuity, and sustainability. These inductive categories allow for the development of theoretical-practical dimensions of the processes for evaluating innovative training against disinformation which may in turn have an inoculation role in the wider public sphere. We suggest improvements to the methodological-operational processes to involve journalists, to do follow-up, assessment, and implementation of wider training projects, contributing to applied research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AI integration in media newsrooms is changing professional routines, required profiles and journalistic products. The acceleration in the development of this technology since the end of 2022 makes it necessary to review these tools in order to analyse their uses and risks, as well as their possible applications in the journalistic field. OpenAI launched Chat-GPT in November 2022 open to the public. This tool has been a key element in this technological revolution. This paper analyses ChatGPT applications in journalistic newsrooms through its introduction during a working day in the routine of different professionals. A mixed methodology was used to carry out this experience: a benchmarking of AI tools applied to journalism was created, a walkthrough experience was carried out with ChatGPT and, based on the results obtained in these first two phases, the experiment with journalists was designed. A total of 12 journalists of different ages and sectors with little or no previous contact with technological tools based on artificial intelligence, as the aim of the study is to observe the application in newsrooms without the need for technical training, participated in this research. The results show the usefulness of the tool to automate mechanical processes, rewrite texts, analyse data and even serve as a content idea creator. On the other hand, journalists have also perceived significant risks such as inaccuracy of AI as well as lack of 'empathy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incorporating a gender perspective in the media entails implementing strategies to work with information in a democratic way. The mobilisation of Las Periodistas Paramos in Spain in 2018 influenced a change towards such a perspective, which is also one of the most relevant innovations identified in Spanish media. The purpose of this work is to draw, for the first time, a map of the initiatives adopted by the Spanish press to incorporate the gender perspective into its newsrooms. To do this, style guides and other initiatives aimed at providing guidance on the introduction of the gender dimension are examined, and semi-structured interviews are used to find out how four women journalists responsible for such an incorporation carry out their work. The results show a substantial, although also uneven, presence of initiatives in the 21 newspapers analysed. Most of the style guides –10 of them have one and nine of them have been accessed– are outdated, obsolete or being updated. Most also contain aspects related to the gender perspective, although they do not include this term explicitly and often do not adapt to today’s reality. In the newspapers that do not have a Style Guide or other types of measures, a sensitivity towards the subject is perceived. On the other hand, four newspapers have a gender editor whose main function is to ensure that the perspective is transversal and reaches all sections, genres and content. These professionals make a positive assessment of their still brief trajectory and agree that journalism has advanced considerably and done important pedagogical work in society in terms of gender, although it seems that this figure will remain necessary for quite some time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The boom in artificial intelligence and automated technology in the journalistic profession has given rise to what are called synthetic media (Crusafon, 2022), media outlets that produce and publish texts, audio, videos, and other news content through processes executed solely by algorithms, without any intervention from journalists. This research has several objectives: to identify the first synthetic media outlets already operating, to describe how these newsrooms without journalists work, to better understand the type of content they produce, and to find out whether these are isolated and ephemeral operations or if, on the contrary, they mark the beginning of a trend toward journalism without the direct intervention of journalists. To this end, we have used an exploratory methodology, enabling us to identify four synthetic media outlets, which have been taken as an analysis sample: JX Press Corp (Japan); Reuters News Tracer (United Kingdom), News Republic (France), and Videre AI (Spain). An analysis of the news content on each project’s web pages was combined with in-depth semistructured interviews with the heads of technology and communication of the three European ventures. The Japanese initiative has no human staff, so its chatbot was the only way to obtain information. The purpose was to learn about the initiatives’ news production process, their impact on the journalistic profession, and their viability. This analysis helps demonstrate that the journalistic world’s reliance on artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly evident and that communication agencies are the first companies to invest in developing and distributing synthetic content to benchmark media. These initiatives, although still limited, are the most recent step in the process of gradually integrating artificial intelligence into news production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implementation of artificial intelligence techniques and tools in the media will systematically and continuously alter their work and that of their professionals during the coming decades. To this end, this article carries out a systematic review of the research conducted on the implementation of AI in the media over the last two decades, particularly empirical research, to identify the main social and epistemological challenges posed by its adoption. For the media, increased dependence on technological platforms and the defense of their editorial independence will be the main challenges. Journalists, in turn, are torn between the perceived threat to their jobs and the loss of their symbolic capital as intermediaries between reality and audiences, and a liberation from routine tasks that subsequently allows them to produce higher quality content. Meanwhile, audiences do not seem to perceive a great difference in the quality and credibility of automated texts, although the ease with which texts are read still favors human authorship. In short, beyond technocentric or deterministic approaches, the use of AI in a specifically human field such as journalism requires a social approach in which the appropriation of innovations by audiences and the impact it has on them is one of the keys to its development. Therefore, the study of AI in the media should focus on analyzing how it can affect individuals and journalists, how it can be used for the proper purposes of the profession and social good, and how to close the gaps that its use can cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of El Profesional de la Información is the property of EPI SCP and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)