Media landscape now shaped by AI, algorithms, and automation
News and other media platforms in Australia and elsewhere face growing challenges from automated decision-making, but the future is not all bad say researchers gathering at QUT later this week for a conference on the topic.
Speakers include Professor Axel Bruns, an internationally renowned Internet researcher in QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre, who will present early findings of the Australian Search Experience project involving ADM+S researchers and the international research and advocacy organisation AlgorithmWatch.
Professor Bruns will also present the QUTex Event Societies on the Brink: Understanding the Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation, which will explore the role of digital and social media in relation to events such as the anti-vaccination protests in Australian cities and rioters in the US Capital.
Other topics being covered over the two days include news and automation, digital inclusion and media use in remote First Nations communities, Facebook advertising, automated content curation and moderation, and platform governance on matters relating to race, gender, and sexuality.
Professor Bruns said news and media was chosen as the first of four focus areas over the lifetime of the ADM+S Centre because automation, algorithms, and artificial intelligence already posed some crucial challenges for this industry, and that further research on these topics was urgently required.
“What we couldn’t have anticipated at the time was the extent to which acute events like the COVID-19 pandemic would raise the stakes in the battle against disinformation,” Professor Bruns said.
Along with Professor Bruns, other ADM+S-linked speakers include the Centre’s director Professor Julian Thomas (RMIT), its associate director, QUT’s Professor Jean Burgess, Professor Mark Andrejevic (Monash University), Professor Daniel Angus (QUT), Professor Kath Albury (Swinburne University), Dr Timothy Graham (QUT), Professor Bronwyn Carlson (Macquarie University), Dr Rosalie Gillett (QUT) and Dr Jeffrey Chan (RMIT).
ADM+S was established in 2019 to investigate how rapidly emerging autonomous decision-making technologies, already replacing human judgement in health, social services, transport, and the media, are impacting on society.
Headquartered at RMIT, it connects researchers and other experts from nine Australian universities, and 22 academic and industry partner organisations from Australia, Europe, Asia and America.
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