The study “Journalism Ethics for the Algorithmic Era” by Sejin Paik from University of Boston drew on Floridi’s (2014) framework to propose a framework for ethical standards for local newsrooms in the U.S. to account for the widespread use of algorithmic systems and platforms.
Ethical guidelines in the U.S. originate from the print era and were created by organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). These guidelines are essential in the democratic society where the press is expected to play the role of a watchdog.
There has been a widening gap between local journalism and national journalism. Changes such as news workers’ editorial processes, technology adoption and the widening resource gap have accounted for this. The impact of AI-driven technologies have further decentralized the news process as news have become highly personalized.
The study is an examination of the ethical challenges these new AI technologies pose to traditional journalistic ethics: 1) what challenges to traditional ethics arise in the light of AI platforms, 2) what areas are currently missing in the ethical guidelines, and 3) who is responsible for the journalistic issues that arise from workers’ and audiences’ reliance on algorithmic systems?
The theoretical framework for the study comes from the Actor Network Theory (ANT) by Latour (1996) and Turner (2005), which examines human-technology dynamics, and from the online framework by Floridi (2014) which “examines information flow within a hyperconnected world with no boundaries between the on- and off-life”.
For the empirical part, 16 interviews with digital and audience engagement editors were conducted via Zoom. The interviews were semi-structured and lasted, on the average, 51 minutes. The interviewees were anonymized for the study.
The findings showed tangible changes in news editors’ news editing and dissemination processes, and showed interactions between journalists and the algorithms as they operated together to spread the news. It was shown that algorithmic systems hold greater editorial agency than ever before – and they are expected to become even more relevant with technological advances.
The editors and newsworkers described exhaustion from having to ‘wear many hats’ and having to adapt to ever-changing work processes – news optimization for the algorithmic feeds and ranking systems. Also, there were discussions about who is responsible for causing harm – the algorithms or the editors?
Second theme from the findings dealt with potential hidden costs of platform partnerships and usage of automated tools. Major technology companies were extending their efforts to support newsrooms of all sizes, and did give funding and tech training, which the interviewees described positively.
This, of course, called into mind several questions about the independence of the newsrooms – do they have an ethical obligation to disclose such funding, and is their independence in the first place violated?
Some of the editors interviewed also stated that they would be willing to rely on algorithms and AI more to alleviate the resource shortages they have. Again, the question to ponder here is how much smaller newsrooms would be willing to compromise on their journalistic values to keep their newsrooms running?
Finally, for the future, the author calls for a rediscussion of the current ethical standards and calls for the adoption of a digital responsibility model – adopting an online perspective that facilitates between journalism and the algorithmic systems.
The article “Journalism Ethics for the Algorithmic Era” by Sejin Paik is in Digital Journalism. (free abstract).
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