The Midweek Conversations series continues to grow, embracing an increasingly diverse range of topics at the intersection of media, communication, and contemporary society. Each meeting reflects the broad and multifaceted perspective with which the Milan School of Media and Communication explores today’s social realities and the evolving landscape of communication.
Below is the abstract from the latest session, presented by Prof. Carlo Nardella, member of the Department of Social and Political Sciences and, of course, part of our MSMC community.
“Best Enemies: Religion, Marketing and Famiglia Cristiana’s Advertising, 2001-2021”
Carlo Nardella
Journalism performs an essential function of information and orientation for society (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2001) and thus enables social and political participation. Public service media in Germany are confronted with several challenges: The strengthening of alternative media and their actors (Strömbäck, 2023) and funding cuts to public service media (Schulz, 2024). The narrative of automation processes in journalism that are intended to increase efficiency and reduce costs (Beckett, 2019; Thurman et al., 2019) is spreading. Added to this, the further development of language models and their improved enables a better accessibility and applicability in journalistic production (Breazu & Katson, 2024; Pavlik, 2023).
Public service media such as BR are trying to deal with the challenges and may use the technical developments for their benefit, as well as developing new concepts for journalistic AI applications.
(RQ1) How is generative AI appropriated and negotiated within a news organization?
(RQ2) What role does newsroom culture (Brüggemann, 2011; Hanitzsch, 2007) as journalistic practice and its meaning, play in the appropriation and negotiation of generative AI?
(RQ3) What changes or stabilizations do the adoption and negotiation of generative AI tools trigger in terms of journalistic practices and product innovations?
The research is designed as a case study and follows an ethnographic approach, interviews, observation, and locality, which is theoretically anchored in actor-network theory (Akrich, 2006; Callon, 2006; Latour, 1998, 2005) and a practice theoretical approach (Reckwitz, 2003).
