From Gutenberg to GPT: How Journalists Make Sense of Generative AI through Occupational History

As digital technologies transform work across occupations, members of those occupations interpret past experiences to make sense of how new technologies impact their identities, roles, and practices. Hence, occupational sensemaking of a new technology is likely to be conditioned by the occupational history. Existing research, however, does not provide a history-cognizant understanding of the relationship between past and ongoing digital transformations. This qualitative case study of an online community explores how journalists make sense of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in relation to their occupational history. We find that journalists construct "transformational accounts" based on their experiences with how technologies transformed their occupation. These accounts are then brought into relation with each other to develop an understanding of GenAI through a process of "retrospective enactment." The study contributes to research on occupational sensemaking, the temporal and scalar qualities of digital transformation, and the role of history in theorizing information systems phenomena.