Beyond the fast and the furious: how Australian journalists cover AI nudging©

Beyond the fast and the furious: how Australian journalists cover AI nudging©

Communication scholars have produced a rich literature about early digital journalists and their role in promoting AI, primarily focused on their contributions to expanding online spaces for news audiences. Typically, their push to extend AI tools such as Google searches and social media reactions have been central to the accounts of computer-assisted reporting. Other accounts depict digital journalists as churnalists creating quick-hitting, AI-generated clickbait in a ticker-like way to meet rapidly rolling deadlines in the 24/7 cycle. This paper seeks to locate recent conceptions of Australian digital journalism and journalists’ representations of their roles in reporting on AI nudges to audiences. Rather than focusing on the top, breaking news headlines, often taken as the public face of digital sites, this paper will examine journalists’ explainer pieces before and after the Australian Robodebt scandal. Guardian Australia reporters Christopher Knaus and Luke Henriques-Gomes exposed the flaws of automated nudging by revealing that many vulnerable Australians received computer-generated letters, or nudges, wrongly demanding they pay inaccurate debts to the federal government’s welfare agency, Centrelink. Surveying digital news reporting since 2017, I hope to suggest that Australian journalists’ unique contributions to the nudging debates have been based on their role conceptions as the public’s defender. Although their role has not halted the clickbait cycle, their commitment should be recognised as part of the larger debate about the public impact of AI. Ultimately this paper aims to contribute to the rich scholarship about the fast and slow paces in digital journalism.©