Journal Description
Emerging Media: Technology, Industry and Society (Emerging Media thereafter) is a SAGE open access peer-reviewed scholarly journal. The journal focuses on the exploration of the emerging issues and future development in the field of media and communication, both theoretically and practically. This journal will publish interdisciplinary research articles and leading trend discussions, particularly in conjunction with the field of artificial intelligence (AI), information and communication technologies (ICTs), new media application, computer science, mobile technology, user experience design, data science, aesthetics, ethical and cultural studies, as well as social and psychological perspectives. In addition, this journal is open to a diversity of theoretical paradigms and methodologies.
Journal Feed
- by Christian-Mathias WellbrockEmerging Media, Ahead of Print. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed various industries, automating tasks and enhancing productivity. Yet, its impact varies across sectors. In mass communication, AI has notably benefited entertainment, public relations, and advertising. However, it poses a lesser advantage for investigative journalism, where labor-intensive research and other highly specialized activities depend on highly educated journalists. This situation parallels Baumol's concept of a cost disease, which applies to labor-intensive “stagnant” service sectors such as healthcare, education, and the performing arts. These sectors rely heavily on human labor and struggle to achieve significant productivity gains from technological advances. This […]
- by Meng ChenEmerging Media, Ahead of Print. This article addresses the urgent need for a comprehensive understanding of the global media coverage of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) by conducting a massive-scale analysis using the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone. With a dataset encompassing 53,967,878 news items from 4,708 online news sources across 67 countries, the study spans the entire trajectory of the pandemic from the first reported case on December 31, 2019, to September 11, 2020. The analysis aims to surpass the limitations of previous research by offering a worldwide perspective on COVID-19 media coverage over a significant timeframe. Additionally, […]
- by Ebenezer AgbagloEmerging Media, Ahead of Print. The advancement of technology has seen the growth of online news platforms where users can interact and share their views in the comments section. The comments section, therefore, has become a site for the expression of divergent views, leading to linguistic practices such as verbal attacks. This study sourced data from GhanaWeb, an online news platform that focuses on sociopolitical occurrences in Ghana, to demonstrate how users rely on insults, alongside other strategies like endorsement, irrelevancy claims, ill-wishes and unpalatable questions to create enmity with the out-group and build solidarity with the in-group. It was […]
- by Caroline WortelEmerging Media, Volume 2, Issue 3, Page 547-570, September 2024. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to disrupt the advertising industry as marketers and brands can leverage its power to create highly engaging personalized content. However, the usage of AI is prone to bias and misinformation and can be used to manipulate. Therefore, various lawmakers such as the European Union aim to enforce AI disclosure messages to protect consumers. But the implications of such disclosures have not yet been studied. This paper draws on existing theories in persuasion knowledge, disclosure theory, inferences of manipulative intent, and AI aversion to develop […]
- by Mathias-Felipe de-Lima-SantosEmerging Media, Volume 2, Issue 3, Page 335-346, September 2024. Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing media and journalism, reshaping processes, content, and audience relationship. This editorial report discusses the opportunities and challenges AI brings to these industries raised by this collection of studies, emphasizing the importance of integrating ethical principles and human-centric approaches to its development. These articles examine how AI reshapes content creation, distribution, and audience interaction while addressing the ethical, political, and economic implications of its integration. Key contributions include discussions on the ethical challenges posed by AI—such as bias, transparency, and accountability—and the need for robust governance […]
- by Zahera HarbEmerging Media, Volume 2, Issue 3, Page 371-381, September 2024. Arab newsrooms and journalists are still attempting to process how to benefit from using artificial intelligence (AI) in their daily news production. Many have started experimenting with generative AI. However, in countries with strong economies, or in newsrooms funded by strong economies like in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, news organizations have endorsed AI technologies beyond ChatGPT and similar tools. The majority of Arab journalists, however, are yet to understand what is meant by AI. Very few news organizations in the region have strategically approached the question of AI. […]
- by Kevin CarillonEmerging Media, Volume 2, Issue 3, Page 422-448, September 2024. In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, public service media (PSM) face a significant challenge: how to leverage recommendation algorithms to enhance their visibility and attractiveness without sacrificing their core values. This study examines the extent to which the Belgian Radio-Television of the French Community (RTBF) has integrated PSM values into the development of a recommender system for news articles on its platform (rtbf.be). The research highlights a conscientious effort to define and translate PSM values before the algorithm design phase, both inside and outside the organization. However, the study also […]
- by Andrea L. GuzmanEmerging Media, Volume 2, Issue 3, Page 347-355, September 2024. How should scholars make sense of the rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence in media work? In this commentary, we argue that researchers can begin by stepping outside of their intellectual silos to see how the challenges and opportunities posed by generative AI are commonly shared across the media industries. We focus on three primary mass communication domains—advertising, journalism, and public relations—to illustrate how media professionals across these fields are adopting similar AI technologies (e.g., machine learning, natural language processing, and recommender systems) for often similar purposes (e.g., content creation, […]
- by Allen MunoriyarwaEmerging Media, Volume 2, Issue 3, Page 474-498, September 2024. This study explores the socio-technological barriers to the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered solutions in three countries of the global south – South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana and Zimbabwe. Through 20 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, it examines the distribution and circulation of AI technologies within selected newsrooms. Furthermore, the article explores socio-technological obstacles to the integration of AI among journalists. Lastly, it examines the consequences of these socio-technological obstacles to journalism. The article specifically seeks to answer three questions: How are AI technologies integrated in southern African newsrooms? What […]
- by Colin PorlezzaEmerging Media, Volume 2, Issue 3, Page 356-370, September 2024. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in journalism has sparked complex ethical debates, particularly with the rise of generative AI systems. By now, AI permeates the entire news cycle, from information gathering to news dissemination, raising questions revolving around issues such as transparency, accountability, responsibility, bias, and diversity. Previous research showed that news organizations have slowly approached and adapted to ethical concerns regarding the use of AI, developing critical stances mainly due to rising AI power, growing audience skepticism, and mounting tensions within the industry between news publishers’ strategies and […]
- by Siho NamEmerging Media, Volume 2, Issue 3, Page 397-421, September 2024. One of the key controversies that generative artificial intelligence (AI) has recently stirred was whether compensation is due for the copyrighted materials used to train AI models. This article explores the logic, trajectories, and dynamics of content generation, including news, through generative AI in two distinctive yet intertwined domains. Guided by a cultural political economy approach, it examines how both the political context (validation/legitimation of AI-generated news content by established news media) and the economic context (use of unpaid and underpaid labor in the forms of freely scraped data and […]
- by Laurence DierickxEmerging Media, Volume 2, Issue 3, Page 449-473, September 2024. The practice of fact-checking involves using technological tools to monitor online disinformation, gather information, and verify content. How do fact-checkers in the Nordic region engage with these technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GAI) systems? Using the theory of affordances as an analytical framework for understanding the factors that influence technology adoption, this exploratory study draws on insights from interviews with 17 professionals from four Nordic fact-checking organizations. Results show that while AI technologies offer valuable functionalities, fact-checkers remain critical and cautious, particularly toward AI, due to concerns […]
- by Sarah ThomasEmerging Media, Volume 2, Issue 3, Page 523-546, September 2024. The article explores the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the entertainment industry, focusing on the impact to screen and audio performers. AI technologies enable the creation of synthetic performances, raising ethical concerns regarding identity manipulation, consent, and performer rights. Ethical AI should prioritize human-centric values such as transparency, accountability, and fairness, but many principles remain abstract and difficult to implement. Examining the intersection of acting and AI – in terms of working practice and discursive narratives used to situate that work – highlights significant issues about responsible AI […]
- by Jie FengEmerging Media, Ahead of Print. Despite the significant progress in studies on metadiscourse, scarce attention has been paid to it in the digital context. Social media platforms including Twitter have become arenas for the current Sino-U.S. discourse competition. In this regard, Twitter can be used to observe the diverse usage of metadiscourse by different political figures and uncover the underlying mechanisms. Combining computer-aided metadiscourse extraction and critical discourse analysis, the paper explores metadiscourse markers from the Chinese and American spokespersons’ tweets to reveal their rhetoric and social functions based on Foucault's “power discourse theory.” The results show that the American […]
- by Antoine HenryEmerging Media, Volume 2, Issue 3, Page 382-396, September 2024. The algorithmic systems utilized by music streaming services have the potential to positively influence individual choices by promoting new artists, but they are also often accused of perpetuating biases. In this research note, we aim to explore the impact of these platforms’ AI-based algorithms on fairness in music consumption. To address this question, we adopt a multidimensional approach that considers the legal, economic, and algorithmic dimensions of fairness. This approach is applied to our EU Horizon Europe Fair MusE project, which advocates for a fairer music ecosystem. However, it should […]
- by Will MariEmerging Media, Volume 2, Issue 3, Page 499-522, September 2024. This study examines how automation and then artificial intelligence (AI) was discussed by news workers in journalism trade publications in the 1980s and 1990s and through the 2000s and 2010s. This era saw the full computerization of the newsroom, as well as the introduction of the civilian, commercial internet and its adoption by the news and media industries. Limited use of automated and early AI tools in these fields dates back to the 1960s and 1970s, with the use of software such as spell- and grammar-checkers, as well as the […]