The State of Journalism As a Lever for Narrative Change in Responsible Tech: Roundtable Learnings
By Sara M. Watson, Siegel Research Fellow, All Tech Is Human
Covering emerging tech has always been challenging. Today, layoffs across both the media and tech industries have organizations strapped for resources and tensions high. And complex topics like misinformation, content moderation, algorithmic bias, deep fakes, social media addiction, and TikTok bans are all intertwined in this cycle of election coverage. News orgs are navigating platform mediation to track a moving target to reach their audiences. And generative AI has us anxiously scenario planning for the future of pretty much everything–everyone is an AI reporter now.
Tech coverage is an essential element of narrative change in the responsible tech ecosystem, alongside civil society organizations, policymakers, and tech industry professionals. And the fourth estate has always been a balancing force for ensuring tech serves the public interests by holding centers of power to account.
Last week, Siegel Research Fellow Sara M. Watson facilitated a group discussion on how All Tech Is Human can help support journalists in the tech industry, with a focus on the challenges and opportunities in covering emerging tech. Participating NYC-based journalists shared recent work they were proud of and connected with other tech journalists. The group also aired the challenges, blockages, and constraints they face when covering complex tech and society issues:
Tech layoffs and sources: The group noted a decrease in sources' willingness to share information due to increased surveillance and fear of retribution. And layoffs in tech mean that cultivated sources quickly go away. Trust and Safety professionals are often most willing to speak to journalists because that puts external pressure and attention to help them address issues within tech firms, but there’s increased fear in pursuing that route. Tech workers have become more fearful of talking to journalists due to layoffs and economic uncertainty.
Media layoffs and resources: Media layoffs are also putting pressure on newsroom resources. Attention has to pivot to keep pace with the news cycle with fewer people, taking time and resources away from investigative reporting. Organizations struggle with resource constraints and technical skills to analyze and investigate complex data, leading to missed opportunities and delays in reporting.
Shifting platform landscape: The group lamented the loss of access to sources and exploratory requests on Twitter. These changes have made it difficult to connect especially with sources in the global south or outside reporters’ established networks. Signal has helped as an encrypted platform, but some journalists are seeing more and more requests to meet in person, face to face rather than connecting even through encrypted services.
Reverse engineering reporting: The group articulated the need to reverse engineer complex AI systems and do computationally informed reporting to understand how they work and how companies implement them, while ensuring explanations are accessible to a broader audience. We need more collaborations between data journalists and researchers to fill in technical and staffing gaps, while maintaining ethical standards. It’s one thing to translate research into publicly-digestible findings, its another to collaborate on the impactful question that results in policy-shaping evidence as a theory of change. Newsrooms need both resources and a greater metabolism to support that kind of technical reporting.
Key Ideas
All Tech Is Human is eager to continue to make connections across the ecosystem to tackle tech’s most complex and pressing challenges. Here are some ideas to continue exploring in the community:
Set up pre-event sessions for journalists at future ATIH gatherings to network and meet with subject matter experts.
Connect journalists with data scientists and student researchers who may be interested in collaborating on data-intensive stories and can lend their technical skills to responsible tech reporting efforts.
Organize a boot camp for journalists and data scientists to collaborate on investigative projects.
Circulate and socialize resources from tech-focused journalism partners such as Muck Rack, Pulitzer Center, Nieman Lab, Tow Center, and the National Press Club.
Set up a Slack channel for ATIH journalists to connect and/or encourage journalists to reach out to the ATIH with requests for resources as they once might have done on Twitter.
Help develop more interdisciplinary training programs that combine computational journalism with traditional investigative journalism skills like FOIA, reading financial statements, etc.
Next Steps and Resources
Join us on Slack and LinkedIn and stay up to date through our Newsletter. Twitter’s not what it used to be, but the responsible tech community is thriving here!
Towards a Constructive Technology Criticism, Columbia Journalism Review
Q&A with Siegel Research Fellow at All Tech Is Human Sara M. Watson
Style Guide for Writing About Technology
How To Talk About AI, Aspen Digital
We Need Better Reporting on A.I., Aspen Digital
You Are Not a Parrot, New York Mag