“AI Is a Story About Labor Automation”: Journalism, Tech, and Perceptions of Precarity

This study is of metajournalistic discourse produced by journalism trade publications concerning the connection between generative artificial intelligence (AI) and labor issues within the field. The research examines 59 articles to understand how actors within the journalism field perceive the effects of generative AI on journalistic labor. Four themes emerged: increased labor precarity; an overall benefit for the field; the technology is not advanced enough yet to matter; and there will be some nebulous negative effects.