Action research at the BBC: Interrogating artificial intelligence with journalists to generate actionable insights for the newsroom
JOURNAL
Action research at the BBC: Interrogating artificial intelligence with journalists to generate actionable insights for the newsroom
Bronwyn Jones and Rhianne Jones | Journalism
This paper provides reflections on an embedded action research project undertaken over a three-year period at the UK’s largest public service broadcaster, the BBC. The project was aimed at eliciting research insights about the role and understanding of AI in news production and facilitate change in the newsroom. This paper surface the messy realities of conducting this work, including challenges to funding such long-term and resource-intensive research and the difficulties of measuring impacts. Practical guidance is also provided, that highlights the need for researchers to cost in time for translational work for example. Overall, the authors emphasise the value of action research in journalism studies, arguing for approaches that retain critical perspectives while closing the gap between theory, critique and practice.
Radio audience in European minority languages: Important reality and structural correlation
JOURNAL
Radio audience in European minority languages: Important reality and structural correlation
Iñaki Zabaleta-Urkiola, Tania Arriaga-Azkarate, and Aitor Castañeda-Zumeta | European Journal of Communication
This paper looks at the audience of public radio channels in indigenous minority languages across Europe, including examples from Spain, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Researchers found that in areas of high mutual intelligibility – where the language could be understood by most people – audience reach of minority channels were significantly higher than in regions where the language could not be broadly recognized. They also found that these public media organizations proved to be important in cultural preservation and re-energizing the language, allowing for a more diverse group of people to speak the minority language and improving cultural diversity within the broadcasting region. In some areas minority radio outperforms their majority language counterparts, demonstrating their impact and showing large amounts of audience reach, which justifies increased funding and a key role within the public media sphere in countries with indigenous languages that demand representation.
Rationalisation of the news - How AI reshapes and retools the gatekeeping processes of news organisations in the United Kingdom, United States and Germany
JOURNAL
Rationalisation of the news – How AI reshapes and retools the gatekeeping processes of news organisations in the United Kingdom, United States and Germany
Felix M. Simon | New Media & Society
This paper surveys the usage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the newsroom, along with the ways in which it has re-shaped journalistic practices. Through interviews with publishers based in the United States, UK and Germany, the authors found that AI is increasingly being used to automate basic tasks such as summarization, verification and transcription. This technology is also being used on the business side of newspapers, allowing companies to streamline audience analytics, targeted content and distribution of stories. The study reflects that while it doesn’t fundamentally change journalism, AI systems reshape the news environment, giving greater power to large tech companies such as Google or OpenAI as they control the infrastructure that powers newsrooms. While AI pushes organizations to more efficient practices, it also requires more transparency to avoid allegations of bias or inaccuracies at the hands of automated systems.
Redefining objectivity: Exploring types of evidence by fact-checkers in four European countries
JOURNAL
Redefining objectivity: Exploring types of evidence by fact-checkers in four European countries
Regina Cazzamatta | European Journal of Communication
This article examines the types of evidence used by fact checkers in four European countries – Germany, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. Researchers identified different types of documentational evidence, including statements, documentation and digital forensic tools, using them to identify differences in their usage depending on the country. Their findings showed that in countries with high political polarization, like Spain, digital forensic tools were used more often by fact-checkers to combat disinformation online. Meanwhile, in countries with increased journalistic standards like Germany, fact-checkers combined different approaches to confirm the validity of news. Finally, fact checking performed by public service broadcasters had the highest degree of hard research and complexity, especially in comparison to international news agencies, which frequently relied on denials from interested parties in press releases.
Projections: The Social Internet
REPORT
Projections: The Social Internet
Henry Cooke & Ian Forrester | BBC Research and Development
This report focuses on the BBC, examining how the public broadcaster can use social media to connect with increasingly isolated online audiences. The authors highlight a pronounced shift away from addictive and algorithmic social media platforms like TikTok towards smaller and more private group chats or social spaces. For PSM this means a digital movement away from a large presence on larger social media platforms, into a wider variety of smaller spaces. This shift requires a higher variety of content across more topics, along with embedding themselves into online communities and establishing an engaged and collaborative relationship with their audiences.
Framing Nordic public service media: Comparing policy discourses in Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
JOURNAL
Framing Nordic public service media: Comparing policy discourses in Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
John Grönvall and Kari Karppinen | European Journal of Communication
This article surveys the public service media (PSM) landscape of the four Scandinavian countries over the last 10 years to determine the ways in which the role of PSM have changed. The authors found clear national differences in the roles of PSM within each country, although they shared common problems, such as competition from private media companies, rising disinformation via social media and an increased difficulty in reaching younger audiences. However, Nordic PSM were most affected by expanded political polarization, with populist leaders advocating against the need for a well-supported public media apparatus and questioning their worth for society.
Public service media as critical media infrastructure for the digital era
JOURNAL
Public service media as critical media infrastructure for the digital era
Gillian Doyle, Kenny Barr & Raymond Boyle | Media, Culture & Society
This article argues that the way in which Public Service Media (PSM) is perceived needs to be fundamentally changed. In the modern digital age, the role PSM play in supporting democracy and combatting disinformation means that their position within the media landscape is of great importance. The authors conclude that PSM’s should be viewed as a critical part of the country’s communication infrastructure to ensure a well-functioning society.
News Literacy and Public Service News Broadcasting: Is There a Connection? Evaluating News Literacy Among Viewers and Non-Viewers of PSB News Programming in Austria
JOURNAL
News Literacy and Public Service News Broadcasting: Is There a Connection? Evaluating News Literacy Among Viewers and Non-Viewers of PSB News Programming in Austria
Kimberly Callecod-Weinrich and Janez Krek | SAGE Open
This study examines the effect of television news programmes run by public broadcasters on the news literacy of consumers. Based on a survey, the authors examined groups of public-broadcast viewers and non-viewers, finding that people who regularly consumed public news were far more likely to be news literate. These findings suggest that public broadcasting allows for an enhanced ability for audiences to evaluate news content, demonstrating its importance to the media landscape.
How public service media are changing in the platform era: A comparative study across four European countries
JOURNAL
How public service media are changing in the platform era: A comparative study across four European countries
Marius Dragomir & Miguel Túñez López | European Journal of Communication
Public service media (PSM) benefit from certain advantages such as access to public funding and technical infrastructure, as well as a special regulatory framework allowing them to reach almost the entire population. However, this special position in society does not protect them from various challenges to which they are regularly confronted, including economic and political pressures or opposition from privately owned media. In the recent year, the shift to platforms has also brought its series of challenges.
This research looks into the transformation of four European PSM in response to the pressures related to platformatisation and how they adapt to this new digital landscape while maintaining the core values of PSM.
Programming Queerness? PSM Remits, Metarepresentational Discourse, and LGBTQ+ Portrayals
JOURNAL
Programming Queerness? PSM Remits, Metarepresentational Discourse, and LGBTQ+ Portrayals
Florian Vanlee | International Journal of Communication
Public service media (PSM) are often seen as key actors in ensuring greater representation of LGBT+ voices in society. They are also seen as having a role in instigating and shaping domestic depictions of sexual and gender differences through their public remits. But in a critical examination of these remits at three European public broadcasters, this paper argues that these remits have instead discouraged the production of queer-themed (fiction) content in favour of programming with “universal appeal.” It also highlights how their pluralism delegitimises “harmful” portrayals and requires PSMs to actively engage with changing representational norms.