Abstract
The study explores uses of algorithmic techniques in journalists’ working environments and investigates newsroom managers’ negotiations of automation as innovation process aimed at ensuring partial or full replacement of human labour with technology. Drawing from 15 qualitative interviews with representatives of newsroom management from legacy news institutions in the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States, the study analyses their (cl)aims to maintain the newsroom as a stable, but dynamic working environment and reveals three dualist propositions when negotiating automation novelties – human journalistic agency stands in contrast to technology, skills are separated from newsworkers, and the creation of news contrasts with its presentation. The results show the interviewees re-articulate the dominance of human agency over technology, re-establish technological innovations as liberating newsworkers rather than subordinating them, and standardise news by re-evaluating the concept as both a civic bond and a commodity. Such considerations are detached from recent concerns about automation of human labour and closer to what we call algorithmic sublime, maintaining the newsroom management’s loyalty to both the professional values of journalism and the corporate goals of management.
Highlights
Corresponding author: Igor Vobič, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Kardeljeva ploščad 5, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.The work of those who manage(d) in the newsroom of today appears to be more complex than ever
The analysis shows that the use of automation in the respective news institutions is at its outset, some acknowledging their newsroom is in an “early” or “experimental” stage of development or practising “tiny” or “rudimentary” automation
The analysis indicates that newsroom management is aware of larger debates on automation as innovation process – some explicitly refuting the “robots are coming for us”
Summary
Corresponding author: Igor Vobič, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Kardeljeva ploščad 5, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. The work of those who (are) manage(d) in the newsroom of today appears to be more complex than ever. Automation is becoming present in newsrooms, in more techsavvy ones, but its development and utilisation remains a matter of continuous experimentation, even controversy. In recent journalistic pieces fears and hopes about automation are reflected, for instance “The robot journalist: an apocalypse for the news industry?” (Guardian, 2012), “How algorithms and human journalists will need to work together” (The Conversation, 2017), or “When robots write the editorials, all will benefit”. Rather than the continuity of the utopian rhetoric of the “electrical”
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
