EXPLORING JOURNALIST PERCEPTIONS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN NEWS PRODUCTION: A STUDY OF INDONESIAN ONLINE NEWS MEDIA

Abstract

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has brought about substantial transformations, particularly within the online news media sector, revolutionizing news production, content development, and audience engagement processes. This qualitative study uses a phenomenological approach to explore "how do journalists Interpret the perceived implications that are associated with the integration of artificial intelligence in news production?." Through in-depth interviews with informants including a Video Journalist, Chief Editor, News Writer, and Reporter, this research investigates the varied manifestations of AI across different online news media. This study highlights the Journalist perceptions from distinct roles AI assumes in diverse media. Online news media employ AI for event visualization and audio conversion, utilize AI for news writing, streamlining content generation, and linguistic richness. AI's application also initiates thematic concepts and enhances efficiency. The weaknesses of AI into news production include an inability to classify the ethical concerns, lack of depth in news writing and accuracy, a lack of data verification, grammatical and data errors from outdated data. Findings align with Role theory and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), indicating that AI can coexist with journalists' technical roles and skills like video editing, statistical data-generation and news visualization although AI cannot fully replicate the nuanced expertise, ethical judgment, and contextual interpretation innate to human journalists that upholding critical thinking and ethical considerations intrinsic to the coverage.