The world is changing at a fast pace and that’s the reason the role of Journalism, Media and technology is also changing. In 2024, there are many changes that can occur in these fields so people belonging to journalism and media should start rethinking their roles. We all know that wars in different parts of the world are happening right now and even in 2023, Ukraine and Palestine was amidst war. There are also some major issues like climate change and uncertain economic conditions that have put journalism in danger. Moreover, there is no big ad market, third-party cookies and less traffic has started the decline of journalism and it’s going to continue in 2024 too.The shifts in social media sites are also expected to decline more in 2024. Facebook and other social media platforms like TikTok are prioritizing content over news on their platforms. Traffic on X has also declined because of removal of headlines from the news. That’s why many sites that people referred to frequently for news are seeing decline in their traffic.
AI is also playing a big part in traffic decline because now it is also being used in many search engines. Many AI models from Google and Microsoft are trying out AI models that can give direct answers to queries, rather than showing different websites. Microsoft Bing was powered by ChatGPT to give real-time news after studying news all over the internet. Google has also released an AI model known as Gemini that will power Google Bard. Many conversational AI assistants will be seen in computers, mobiles and cars in 2024. Many people are now starting to become familiar with AI models with ChatGPT being the most popular. Some use AI chatbots to play around while some use them for useful purposes.
If we see the decline of journalism from a business perspective, about 20,000 media jobs in the US were lost in 2023. There are also ‘ghost newsrooms’ with only one reporter employed. On the other hand, digital newsrooms who became popular through social media are doing good. News has been about text based articles for the past years but now news will focus more on audios and videos because of the changing behavior of the audience about news. It will be a ‘second phase, in digital newsroom and will change the outlook of news in 2024. Many platforms and businesses try to make different news formats to gain more traffic. But the result shows that if the news options are too much, the people will get confused and overwhelmed. There is also news avoidance among young people that needs to be addressed.
Ever since ChatGPT got launched, newsrooms are trying to adapt to AI because they know that they have to use AI one way or another to excel in today’s world. There are many ways that the media uses AI for things like summarisation of news, making headlines, copy editing, transcription, translation, image generation and article generation.
Elections in about 40 countries are expected to happen in 2024 and people are curious to see how AI will play its role in elections. In the recent Argentina elections, candidates used AI imagery to gain attention of the public. It didn’t bring any grand results but we will have to see how AI will be used for elections in 2024. Another thing that people can expect to see in 2024 is new devices that can work well with AI. There will be AI hearables, pins, pendants, smart glasses and VR headsets. There are also many more predictions about AI in 2024 that we will have to look forward to and see if they become true.
H/T: ReutersInstitute
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