Stepping Towards Technological Innovation in Journalism: Barriers for the Use of Artificial Intelligence and Automation in Developing Newsrooms

Abstract

The impacts of digital technology on news media industry manifest itself in different parts of the world. Many big media organizations, in developed Western countries, are now using AI technology and automation in their newsrooms. This is somehow not the case in developing countries that confront multi-facet challenges to embrace AI-related technological advancements in their news ecologies. This study specifically focuses on the case of Pakistan’s mainstream news media. Despite economic and technological constraints, the country’s news media is considered as vibrant and vocal within South Asia with massive expansion in the past fifteen years. Nevertheless, it is still in nascent stage in terms of technological advancements in news media industry. Therefore, using diffusion of innovation theory, this study aims to address issues in the adoption of AI technology and automation by Pakistan’s mainstream news media. To achieve this aim, this study employs the qualitative method of in-depth interviews. Findings suggests that the adoption of AI technology and automation is not without potential challenges at various stages of the diffusion of technological innovation. The Pakistani journalists from the Urdu language’s newspapers, regardless of their age and gender, are substantially resistant to accept technological innovations as compared to their colleagues from television news channels and English-language’s newspapers. This study highlights that the Pakistani journalists’ lack of awareness and their limited interest into AI-driven transformations underpin their resistance and fear to adopt technological innovations in routine practice. Interviewed journalists, regardless of their gender and age, express their concern that the use of automated journalistic tools can result in job redundancy in local news media ecology. This study highlights other obstacles too for the adoption of AI-driven journalistic practice in Pakistan’s mainstream news media including: economic and technological constraints, a lack of journalists’ training and an absence of government’s strategies and policies to deploy AI technology in news media industry like other sectors in Pakistan, and the country’s existing digital divide.