Scope for Introduction of AI in Journalism Curriculum: A Scoping Review

Since the introduction of ‘ChatGPT’ a Generative AI application by ‘OpenAI’ in 2022, there has been a flurry of activity on the possible roles that AI can play in the field of education and the impact it can cause on human development. As the fourth pillar of a democratic society, Journalism plays an important role in human development and needs media for mass dissemination. Journalism is constantly grappling with fast evolving media technologies including Social Media, 3600 Media, Virtual Reality, etc. and before long AI is upon it. Development of AI in news media is happening along four fronts viz. content generation, data analytics and insights, newsroom automation and audience segmentation. However, the curriculum of Journalism courses in India is lagging far behind in terms of digital technology integration. In such a scenario, it is not known if AI can be introduced into Journalism curriculum. This paper sets out to investigate the scope for introduction of AI in educational settings in general and in the curriculum of Journalism and Mass Communication in particular. Towards this a critical review of international policy research and guidelines for the introduction of AI applications in education; design considerations for developers of AI for educational purposes; pedagogical benefits and challenges of AI in Media Education; requirements of digital competencies for students and teachers of journalism; institutional framework for upholding ethical principles of journalism in the AI era; enhancing trust and preventing algorithmic biases in AI based technologies and other related issues; are needed. The methodology used for this research paper is a scoping review of literature to comprehend the extent of available research on the above aspects. The scoping review revealed that AIbased applications do have the potential for aiding journalism studies especially in content creation and curation, audience engagement, automated video editing, predictive analysis, interactive storytelling, etc. However, competency frameworks will have to be developed for students and teachers of Higher Education before introduction of AI-based courses. Further, educational ecosystems should have mutual trust among corporate that offer the technologies, the experts who evaluate and recommend and the educational institutions that procure and use them. In the final count, human oversight in AI-powered media education tools is imperative. In conclusion it can be said that the potential and challenges of AI in education are still being evaluated and it may take a while in introducing AI in Journalism curriculum.