MEDIAWATCH: JMAD 2026 – AI vs Journalism vs Democracy
It’s that time of year when JMAD hold their conference on the big issues facing Journalism, this year it’s the influence of AI.…
Professor Wayne Hope: Artificial Intelligence, Tech Behemoths and the Future of Journalism
On 3 and 4 September, AUT’s Journalism, Media & Democracy (JMAD) research centre is holding a conference entitled “AI, Big Tech and Journalism”.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) arising out of information-communication infrastructures constitutive of the internet, refers to the interconnectivities of neural learning, machine learning, inter-computer programming, data science, robotics and algorithmic processing. Major tech behemoths—Alphabet/Google, Meta/Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent—have accumulated relevant technological expertise from acquired AI start-ups to supercharge their business models, economic power, and social reach and political influence. Recent arrival, Nvidia provides tech behemoths with chips, platforms and graphics-processing units for artificial intelligence tasks and infrastructures. Journalists of all kinds confront and investigate these developments as AI reshapes their workplaces and livelihoods.
With these thoughts in mind, this conference includes presentations on the following themes: AI and Right-extremism; disinformation, distrust and democracy; AI and newsrooms; AI and journalism education; and AI controversies and investigative journalism (e.g., data centres, electricity and ecological damage; AI weapons technology and war; election campaign manipulation). The keynote speakers are: Nilesh Christopher, Timothy Ström and Silvia Montana-Nino. Blog readers are welcome to search their backgrounds and accomplishments.
The Daily Blog
…Professor Wayne Hope, Dr Greg Treadwell, the EVER brilliant Associate Professor Merja Myllylahti and the excellent AUT School of Communication are at the forefront of the issues confronting Journalism and its relation to democracy as the Fourth Estate.
Previous focus has been on ownership and the finicalization of media ownership, this year it’s the power of AI that is seen as the existential threat.
This matters because of the impact of Journalism on Democracy. If AI can influence Journalism, it can influence politics.
The flood of unverified news generated by AI is a direct threat to our understanding of reality.
Nilesh Christopher is a Nieman Fellow from Harvard University. He is a technology journalist working at the Los Angeles Times.
His speech is titled, ‘The liar’s dividend: AI, epistemic crisis, and what’s left of journalism’
I’m geeking out at the smartness.
It was his own experience of sharing a fake AI generated video that he was certain was real that forced him to pause and examine how AI undermined trust.
“I thought AI would teach people to believe in lies. Instead it trained people to dismiss the truth”.
He started studying the impact of unregulated AI in the Global South to get ahead of what would happen in the Global North.
He witnessed the impact of Deep Fake adverts dropped days before Indian Elections.
Those deep fakes were seen by 15million.
In India, Modi’s Nationalist Hindu Party openly hires vast armies of users to spread divisive social media messages.
It amounts to a State sanctioned falsehood Ministry.
AIs power to reinforce beliefs is greater than its ability to deceive.
You can no longer solely rely on your human skills as a fact checker.
Trump’s big lie that the election was stolen is an example of how falsehoods can flood the zone and sow chaos so truth gets squeezed out.
AI has trivialised human suffering.
We are now seeing AI generated conflict entrepreneurs hawking falsehoods based on the latest trends with the only currency being your feelings that are generated to buy something or donate.
Manufactured apathy has elapsed original truth.
We are at a moment of cultural fracture where reality can not be ascertained.
ALL information is viewed with a veil of uncertainty. There is a sense of question over everything.
Content Credentials now track the edits of content so users can see the ingredients of how content has been made.
In the 1980s 50% of adults trusted Institutions.
In 2026 only 27% did.
Trust is dispersed, not dead.
We have a situation now, where we are going back to pre-literacy relational trust we had in oral cultures – but mediated biotech we all don’t understand.
AI and Right Extremism is being Chaired by Sarah Baker with speakers: Paul Mountfort, Rashad Seeden and Brett Nicholls.
Mountfort delves into the use of the Lord of the Rings by Italian Crypto-fascists in the 1970s.
Helms Deep gets recast as an anti immigration movement.
This legacy of being an Aryan fantasy leap frogs to the American experience with Thiel launching Palantir which has become a massive surveillance weapon.
The Libertarian Far Right have adopted Tolkien themes and manufactured small government militia backed by enormous powers.
Seeden argues that AI slop helps the Right. He notes early this year that Australia was swamped with low quality AI slop supporting Pauline Hanson. The vast majority of those interacting with the imagery had no idea that it wasn’t real.
Click farms were being created by industrial scale clickbait via Vietnam to make money.
This grift plays to the worst angels of our nature for clickbait money.
Seeden argues these click farms are ‘Inorganic Intellectuals’ (the reverse of Gramsci’s Organic Intellectuals) and that far right polarisation is more profitable than left wing polarisation.
Seeden looked at the content creators in Indonesia and many were Muslim themselves who were exploiting anti-Islamic racism in Australia!
They are feeding Australian fake racism for grift money!
This create s a’new common sense’ where Muslims and Migrants are seen as existential threats where Pauline Hansen is seen as the saviour of true Australian values.
This allows the far right to thrive on social media platforms.
Nicholls looks at the rise of Pauline Hanson where her racism has been mainstreamed. He argues that there is a racist residue in Australian culture. The idea that the white majority legally own Australia. One Australia play to these cultural gravities.
This manifests as social media immediacy that provokes reactionary intentions which circulate at speed.
This bigotry is experienced in the moment minus any truth or objectivity.
The very architecture of the platforms are focused on flow and immediacy that avoids mediation or reflection.
Circulation and flow trumps introspection.
AI takes this to another level where manufactured outrage is the only currency at the expense of civil society.
The Left can’t copy the same tactics because the Left requires negotiation between groups, it requires constructive mediation and solidarity where a narrative of the future hasn’t been created yet.
JMAD continue to pursuer the issues at the very forefront of Journalism, we are lucky we have them.
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Looks like Good Investigative Journalism is being stifled in this country, with the sacking of Maki Sherman and Ming Forbes. The media has been hijacked by political interests who now control the narrative.