The Potential Apocalypse in Journalism
By Janelle Bradley
Technology has increasingly made life more simplistic over the past few years and inventors only plan to make more technologies like artificial intelligence that are capable of completing complex tasks having the same ability of competence as humans.
Now how would these technologies shape the future of Journalism and Media? Are authentic journalists who go out to report stories totally replaceable by machines, databases, and algorithms?
Well, there would definitely be some changes. For one advancement in technology may allow for faster fact checks and what can come with this is no bias or conflict of interest from a reporter. It would make creating stories faster and easier. It would be like a calculator, accurate results without the emotions or outside influences. There would be many tasks that journalists may deem tedious now done by algorithms or other forms of technology.
With these potential advancements in media, there are also the setbacks. Like in a TED Talk by Eli Parser states that the consumer would be limited to the type of news they’d receive.
A simple search of a news topic is more likely to sway into a narrative of your interests than to have a diverse set of results that would be more knowledgeable for the consumer. He described this phenomenon as a filter bubble. These algorithms that are to be factual, recognizing adapting and applying someone’s interests to create their own world of news limiting them.
Technology fails. The same bots and artificial intelligence that are currently being tweaked and perfected will always face the possibility of failing. Currently, bots are spewing out fake news to social media users because of its shock value.
These algorithms and bots are taking sensationalized headlines as something newsworthy because they can make the calculations and are aware of the audiences the headline can generate. Stories and media are becoming monetized and seen more as profits and that is how these technologies are treating the news as well. Human reporters have the ability to avoid sensationalizing news for profit and just create and promote content that would serve the people that are living in a democracy.
Media under the management of new technology will have journalists in a frenzy, if a story is published under the production of artificial intelligence or bots it will soon become the crutch that journalists use in their reporting. It would eventually make their reporting unoriginal and whenever a story isn’t factual or has some mistakes in it, the journalist would most likely blame the technology.
Although there are some benefits in incorporating technology in media, it is essential that there is a maintenance of human interactions because journalism requires people to be in touch and in communication with each other.
Once journalists are on auto-pilot, what story or truth will there be to pursue? Democracy is for the people by the people and the journalism that is designed to keep democracy alive should be for the people by the people as well. Think of the manipulations and other changes to our society if your news was controlled by technology. Possibly overwhelmed and anxious to the fact that algorithms are picking your stories and you’re being fed information someone else want’s you to see whether that may be businesses or the government.
