University of Helsinki
We are pleased to announce that the recording of Prof Payal Arora’s excellent keynote speech in now available!
You can access the speech here on Alekstanteri Institute’s YouTube channel. Subtitles to the video will be added within two weeks.
Follow-up on the conference
We would like to thank all presenters and attendees for their participation!
While the conference has now ended, we hope our conversations will continue. Our discussions showed that there is indeed a need to recenter the research agenda on automation and data-driven journalism in order to accommodate and understand the diversity of global experiences and practices.
A recording of the keynote by Professor Payal Arora will be made available on this webpage and the YouTube channel of the Aleksanteri Institute soon. Please follow this page for updates.
Edit 28.5.2021:
Please find the recording of the keynote speech here.
Attendee registration
Registration for attendees is now open!
Welcome to the conference ‘Automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western world: actors, practices, and socio-political impact’! If you want to participate in the conference as an attendee (without paper), please fill in the registration form latest during May 3, 2021: Registration form
The conference program can be found here: Conference program
Edit 4.5.20201:
Attendee registration for the conference is now closed. If you would like to participate, please contact one of the organisers to get the attendee link. In the email, please let us know if you want to attend on Wednesday and/or Thursday.
Mariëlle Wijermars m.wijermars@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Olga Dovbysh olga.dovbysh@helsinki.fi
Hanna Tuulonen hanna.tuulonen@helsinki.fi
Conference program
Please find an overview of the planned sessions attached. We are looking forward to welcoming you at the conference on May 5–6, 2021!
The registration for attendees without paper can be found here (deadline May 3, 2021): Attendee registration
Automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western world: actors, practices, and socio-political impact
Conference program
Day 1: May 5, 2021
12:00–12:10 (GMT+3): CONFERENCE OPENING
Mariëlle Wijermars, Olga Dovbysh and Hanna Tuulonen
12:10–13:15 (GMT+3): SESSION 1 – THE POLITICS OF AUTOMATION AND DATA-DRIVEN JOURNALISM
Moderator: Mariëlle Wijermars (Helsinki University, Finland; Maastricht University, Netherlands)
- News Reception and Authoritarian Control in a Hybrid Media System: Russian TV Viewers and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Maxim Alyukov (Tyumen University, Russia; Centre for Independent Social Research, St. Petersburg, Russia; Helsinki University, Finland) - Lighter lips, a Bollywood funeral and the Niger elections: Share-It, the algorithmic video news infrastructure for the Global South’s less-connected
Alette Schoon (Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa) - Complexity politics and robot journalism
Anastasia Golofast (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia)
13:15–13:30 (GMT +3): 15 MIN BREAK
13:30–14:45 (GMT+3): SESSION 2 – VALUES AND PRACTICES OF DATA JOURNALISM BEYOND THE WESTERN WORLD
Moderator: Ester Appelgren (Södertörn University, Sweden)
- The strategic value of data journalism
Lúcia Mesquita; Mathias Felipe De-Lima-Santos (Dublin City University, Ireland) - Telling Data Stories: An Ethnographic Account of Data Journalism in an Indian Newsroom
Srravya Chandhiramowuli; Bidisha Chaudhuri (International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore, India) - Moving towards transparency: how the data journalism community in Brazil has contributed to a (mostly) accountable Covid-19 news coverage
Marilia Gehrke (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil) - Trust and reliability of data in authoritarian regime: Practices of data journalism in Russian newsrooms
Olga Dovbysh (Helsinki University, Finland)
14:45–15.00 (GMT +3): 15 MIN BREAK
15:00–16:30 (GMT+3): KEYNOTE PROFESSOR PAYAL ARORA (Rotterdam Erasmus University, Netherlands) – NEXT BILLION USERS, NEXT BILLION JOURNALISTS?
Cheap mobile phones and data plans have brought the “next billion” users online, the vast low-income communities in the global south who are engaging with and shaping the global infosphere and the future of data-driven journalism. Does this translate to Spivak’s subaltern finally gaining voice not just as speakers but as authors, as reporters? This talk pushes against simplistic tropes of empowerment and collective intelligence by looking closely at the politics of Archiving for future facts, the Aesthetics of everyday news-making, and the Affect of digital communalism that impacts newsworthiness.
16:30–17:00 (GMT +3): 30 MIN BREAK
17:00–18:15 (GMT+3): SESSION 3 – AUTOMATION AND PLATFORMISATION OF NEWS
Moderator: Stefanie Sirén-Heikel (Helsinki University, Finland)
- News Platformisation and Online Content Moderation: Rethinking Media Pluralism Online
Giovanni De Gregorio (Bocconi University, Italy) - More than code: The complex network that involves journalism production in five Brazilian robot initiatives
Silvia DalBen; Amanda Jurno (Texas University, USA; Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brasil) - Automated Journalism beyond Western countries: Determining the type of automated content strategy adopted by La Nacion
Mathias Felipe de Lima Santos (Navarra University, Spain)
18:15–18:30 (GMT +3): 15 MIN BREAK
18:30–19:30 (GMT+3): CLOSING DISCUSSION AND VIRTUAL SOCIALIZING
Day 2: May 6, 2021
12:00-13:15 (GMT+3): SESSION 4 – MAPPING ALGORITHMIC JOURNALISM BEYOND THE WESTERN WORLD (1/2): EVIDENCE FROM AFRICAN, CHINESE, INDIAN AND ARAB NEWSROOMS
Moderator: Hanna Tuulonen (Helsinki University, Finland)
- A study of the human-computer interface axis, with focus on evolving AI in Indian media
Rahul Dass; Bhavneet Singh Aurora Bennett (Bennett University, Greater Noida, India) - Introducing AI inside Al Jazeera newsroom
Ahmed El Gody (Örebro University, Sweden) - Artificial Intelligence in Chinese Newsrooms
Joanne Kuai (Karlstad University, Sweden)
13:15–13:30 (GMT +3): 15 MIN BREAK
13:30–14:45 (GMT+3): SESSION 5 – GOVERNANCE BY INFRASTRUCTURE? AUTOMATION AND MEDIA CONTROL IN RUSSIA
Moderator: Katja Lehtisaari (Tampere University, Finland)
- Codes of conduct in the Russian search industry: the Yandex.News controversy and its aftermath
Françoise Daucé; Benjamin Loveluck (EHESS, Paris, France) - Leveraging public-private partnerships in effectuating online media control: The case of Russian Netoscope
Liudmila Sivetc (Turku University, Finland); Mariëlle Wijermars (Helsinki University, Finland; Maastricht University, Netherlands) - Pushing an agenda: A computational analysis of Russian media’s push notifications content
Kirill Bryanov (HSE University, Moscow, Russia)
14:45–15:00 (GMT +3): 15 MIN BREAK
15:00–16:15 (GMT+3): SESSION 6 – AI-DRIVEN TECHNOLOGIES IN THE RUSSIAN MEDIA INDUSTRY: TRENDS, ACTORS, AND FUTURE-ORIENTED SOLUTIONS
Moderator: Svetlana Bodrunova (St.Petersburg State University, Russia)
- AI-driven technologies and the Russian media: the big picture of actors and solutions
Maria Lukina (Moscow State University, Russia) - Artificial intelligence in Russian newsrooms: practices of usage and influence on media content
Diana Kulchitskaya (Moscow State University, Russia) - Perception of AI-driven technologies in the media industry by Russian journalists
Sergey Davydov (Moscow State University, Russia) - AI and media: Debates on innovations in Russian public and scholarship discussions
Andrey Zamkov (Moscow State University, Russia)
16:15–16:30 (GMT +3): 15 MIN BREAK
16:30–17:45 (GMT+3): SESSION 7 – MAPPING ALGORITHMIC JOURNALISM BEYOND THE WESTERN WORLD (2/2): EVIDENCE FROM AFRICAN, LATIN AMERICAN AND INDIAN NEWSROOMS
Moderator: Olga Dovbysh (Helsinki University, Finland)
- Appropriating AI in the African newsroom: reflections on the South African case
Trust Matsilele; Wallace Chuma (Cape Town University, South Africa) - Mapping the obstacles in the uptake of automated decision-making technologies in Latin America outlets
Silvia Montaña-Niño (Queensland University of Technology, Australia); Víctor García-Perdomo (Universidad de La Sabana, Colombia) - Algorithmic Journalism: Challenges and Opportunities for African Newsrooms
Ammina Kothari (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA); Sally Ann Cruikshank (Middle Tennessee State University, USA) - Smart technologies embraced in newsroom: Role of new forms of journalism with special reference to news industry in the India context
Dipannita Das; Upadhyay Kumar Ashwani (Symbiosis International University, Pune, India)
17:45–18:00 (GMT +3): 15 MIN BREAK
18:00–19:00 (GMT+3): CLOSING SESSION
Mariëlle Wijermars, Olga Dovbysh and Hanna Tuulonen
Keynote speaker
We are delighted to announce that ‘Automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western world’ -online conference will have Payal Arora as a keynote speaker!
In her keynote ‘Next billion users, next billion journalists?’ professor Arora will talk about how cheap mobile phones and data plans have brought the “next billion” users online, the vast low-income communities in the global south who are engaging with and shaping the global infosphere and the future of data-driven journalism. Does this translate to Spivak’s subaltern finally gaining voice not just as speakers but as authors, as reporters? The talk pushes against simplistic tropes of empowerment and collective intelligence by looking closely at the politics of Archiving for future facts, the Aesthetics of everyday news-making, and the Affect of digital communalism that impacts newsworthiness.
“Payal Arora is a digital anthropologist and an author, speaker and professor. She holds the Chair in Technology, Values, and Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her expertise lies in ethical AI, inclusive design & UX among low-income communities worldwide and comes with more than a decade of fieldwork experience in such contexts.
She is the author of a number of award-winning books including the ‘Leisure Commons’ and more recently the “The Next Billion Users” with Harvard Press. Engadget (Top 5 in the ‘Technorati top 100’ and Times endorsed ‘best blogs on tech’) stated that her Harvard book is “the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find.” Forbes named her the “next billion champion” and “the right kind of person to reform tech.” Several international media outlets have covered her work including The BBC, The Economist, Quartz, Tech Crunch, The Boston Globe, F.A.Z, The Nation and CBC. She has consulted on tech innovation for diverse organizations such as UNESCO, KPMG, GE, and HP. She has given more than 200 talks in 109 cities in 54 countries alongside figures like Jimmy Wales and Steve Wozniak and a TEDx talk on the future of the internet. She is the founder of Catalyst Lab, a digital storytelling organization and co-founder of FemLab.Co, a future of work initiative. She sits on several boards such as Columbia University’s Earth Institute and World Women Global Council in New York. She has held Fellow positions at GE, ZEMKI, ITSRio, and NYU and is a section editor for Global Perspectives, a new University of California Press journal. She has a Masters in International Policy from Harvard University and a PhD in Language, Literacy and Technology from Columbia University. She is Indian and American and currently lives in Amsterdam.”
For more information, please visit: https://www.eur.nl/en/people/payal-arora [Accessed 10.1.2021]
Call for Papers
Automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western world
Online conference | May 5–6, 2021
The research project ‘Sustainable journalism for the algorithmic future’ in partnership with the Aleksanteri Institute and Swedish School of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki invite the submission of papers to be presented at the online conference ‘Automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western world: actors, practices, and socio-political impact’.
Algorithmic systems and other data-driven practices exert increasing influence over today’s societies, reshaping how social and economic systems function (Gillespie 2014). Algorithms are society’s new “power brokers,” dictating the stories that we pay attention to, the activities we participate in, and the people we connect with (Kitchin 2017). The news media is among those industries where artificial intelligence and algorithms are making strides and reordering the playing field as their use diversifies and expands. AI and algorithmic systems are implemented in newsrooms at various stages of the workflow: from smart tools that assist journalists in producing stories to the fully automated production of news articles, and from audience data analysis that informs editorial decisions to algorithmic recommendation systems that match specific content to users. On social media platforms, that form an increasingly central node in news consumption, algorithms not only generate news feeds based on our acquaintances’ actions and advertisers’ preferences (Van Dijck & Poell 2013) but also perform as actors with their own judgment (Carlson 2018). The algorithmic systems employed by social media platforms, news aggregators and other recommender systems can therefore affect the journalistic process and professional practices of media practitioners.
Current scholarly debate on these issues prioritizes and builds upon empirical studies conducted in democratic, Western contexts. Much less is known about the drivers of digital innovation uptake and its socio-political impact in other political and cultural contexts, and this is problematic. Countries such as China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa and South Korea do implement global or introduce their own AI-driven tools in their news media This challenges the mediated reality they produce and can, in turn, affect global media agendas (e.g., in the international activities of Chinese Xinhua, Russian RT and Arab Al Jazeera). At the same time, the socio-political impact of news and disinformation amplified through social media is evident across the Global South, where moderation efforts by global platforms lag behind.
This online conference strives to place the discussion of automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western and Anglophone world. We build upon previous research (Hanitzsch et al 2019, Henkel et al 2020) demonstrating that media innovation and its adoption develop differently depending on the specific characteristics of media systems and markets. Understanding the algorithmic turn in journalism as a socially constructed process – dependent on a country’s journalistic culture, news media’s formal and informal institutions , and the societal role of media – we propose an alternative list of questions to be added to the discussion. When the main media outlets are owned or controlled by the state, who benefits from the automation of media processes, and in what way? When censorship and self-censorship are embedded into journalist professional culture, will the implementation of algorithmic systems lead to more freedom and independence of journalists, or vice versa? How does the economic efficiency promised by automation leverage the political/ideological efficiency of media institutions in authoritarian contexts? What is the importance of algorithmic systems in spreading and amplifying propaganda and disinformation in different media systems?
We welcome both disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives and studies employing various social scientific methods, including comparative case-studies, ethnography, socio-legal, and STS studies. Submissions could address, but are not limited to, the following areas:
- The effects of algorithmic and AI-driven tools on professional practices and routines in newsrooms;
- Media interlopers and newcomers to the media industry – from IT developers in newsrooms to the role of big technological companies;
- Implications of AI and data-driven journalism on the public value of news media;
- Disinformation, fake news and fact checking;
- The influence of global social media platforms and their algorithmic recommender systems on media outlets;
- Robotised, algorithmic, augmented, computational, data-driven and other innovative forms of journalism: challenges and opportunities across the globe.
We accept two types of submissions:
Individual paper submissions should be written in English and contain a clear outline of the argument, theoretical framework, methodology and results. Abstracts should be between 250 and 500 words.
Panel proposals should be written in English and consist of a panel rationale (300 words) and abstracts of three papers (max. 250 words per paper).
Please submit your proposal through the submission portal:
Important dates:
Deadline for paper and panel submissions:
February 15, 2021 23:59 UTC+2
Selections results:
March 15, 2021
Conference will be organized as online event. The hosts will strive to accommodate participants’ respective time zones.
Host and organizers:
The event is hosted by the University of Helsinki and organised by Dr. Olga Dovbysh (Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki), Hanna Tuulonen (Swedish School of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki) and Dr. Mariëlle Wijermars (Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, University of Maastricht).
Should you have any questions about the conference, please contact Olga Dovbysh: olga.dovbysh [at] helsinki [dot] fi or check the conference website: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/automation-in-media/