By: Zachary Andrade
Stuart Duncan
Stuart Duncan, a PhD student and Lab contributor, is attuned to the miniature. Within the Global Journalism Innovation Lab, he has worked closely with TMU partners Sibo Chen, Nicole Blanchett, Charles Davis, and Frauke Zeller on the application of AI in a range of journalistic settings. A former producer for CBC, his interests now cater to the employment of AI chatbots in small, Canadian newsrooms; both its successes, and what challenges its application. Over Zoom, he details building bots, the limits of a budget, working for publications of all sizes, and lead authoring scholarly work.
“You don’t a get to lead projects like that very often, and you don’t often get to develop methodologies.” Stuart describes a paper he has been authoring for the Lab, one exploring the quality of online deliberation in social media spaces. “That’s a nice thing to try as a PhD candidate.” He cites his work in the Lab among his favourite; a culmination of the experience he has gained working alongside industry professionals, with the attentiveness to independent publications that is exceedingly rare.
“I got started in media and journalism through campus and community radio and newspapers. And so I think that for me, there’s always an interest [in] what small news organizations can do, and the impact that they have can often be far beyond what their size is.” His primary research is concerned with the challenges presented to small newsrooms when implementing AI systems. Stuart built a chatbot prototype to better understand the difficulties that a staff of ten or less could face. While his study is still underway, he outlines a glaring concern which plagues journalists even at the corporate level: budget.
His time at Canada’s oldest broadcasting network now mirrors the subjects of his work. “[CBC] had, for lack of a better word, IT departments that could do AI based experimentation and build their own systems for their work, where a smaller newsroom with five people probably doesn’t have a dedicated tech person, they definitely wouldn’t have the budget of a CBC. So, how does that change how they approach AI?” Stuart is part of a dedicated team of scholars keen on calibrating the advent of these tools for the betterment of quality reporting. To look ahead means optimizing an existing good.
From our Conversation:
Q: What in media needs to change for a more sustainable model of journalism?
A: Probably funding, so you can effectively fund both small and large news organizations. So, that they can do effective journalism without being impacted by budget constraints… We have to figure out some form of model that can help fund and support journalism, both small and large, so that there is still independent news organizations that are holding powerful people to account.

“I got started in media and journalism through campus and community radio and newspapers. And so I think that for me, there’s always an interest [in] what small news organizations can do, and the impact that they have can often be far beyond what their size is.”
Michelle Bartleman
In Michelle Bartleman’s eyes, automation is key in the continued model of journalist-as-vocation. A trained journalist herself, Michelle spent many years as both a writer and computational agent in multiple newsrooms. More recently, she has traversed the academic landscape and is now a current PhD student at the University of Ottawa, primarily focused on AI automation in newsrooms. “There’s not a lot of it in Canada right now […] I’m of the opinion that there should be more uptake of this content.” Her research stems from the frustrations of modern journalistic disparities; where powerful tools of convenience are available but not permissible, and greater workloads are mounted almost daily. “It was very frustrating for me as a journalist to know that there were all of these applications that could make my work easier, and I had no agency to apply them. You waste your time just doing these things that could be automated, that could be auto filled or generated to get things done quicker. And I don’t think those things change the nature of what I do as a journalist.”
At the end of June, Michelle traveled to Australia’s Gold Coast to participate in a talk alongside Lab members at the International Communication Association Conference. The panel shared brief summaries of their current projects (all within the sphere of AI innovation in journalism) before opening the discussion to questions from the audience. “I think as we clarify these really specific applications, people are more intrigued and less scared of it. […] I remember just how cohesive the panel was, that we could each bring this different perspective, and then how engaged the audience was.” These efforts are valuable to Michelle, not only to disseminate what has proved to be a years-long endeavour, but also to dispel growing fears of AI in traditionally human-centric spaces.
“There is some content that is really well automated, things that have structured date [like] sports results. Do you know how many times I had to go to junior hockey games and capture the score?” Michelle is working to broaden a tool which currently is being used by only a handful of major publications in Canada. It comes at a necessary time, when few are learning about journalism in the nation, and fewer are seeking the limited jobs within its industry. “I fundamentally believe that if we can automate these number-heavy, structured stories, it frees up journalists to actually do the good journalism.” Now, the jobs of thousands of writers rest upon the hiring of a single employee.
From our Conversation:
Q: What in media needs to change for a more sustainable model of journalism?
A: Ultimately what needs to change is adaptability. I went to J-School in 2015, and I was learning things that I knew were irrelevant. […] Journalism needs to be able to change its sense of what it is and what its ideology is and adapt it to a new information ecosystem.

“I think as we clarify these really specific applications, people are more intrigued and less scared of it”, said Michelle in regards to AI innovation in journalism.
Alia Azmi
Activism and social media: two counterparts which in recent years have demonstrated the greatest strengths and weaknesses in both. Alia Azmi, a PhD student at QUT, knows these trends well, and has dedicated her research to graphing politically charged language onto the moments associated with them. A professor in Indonesia, Alia grew curious of the interplay between tangible activism and the way in which it is described in her country. “I started to be interested in this issue because of the global MeToo Movement. In the beginning, Indonesian scholars were not convinced that there would be that kind of movement in Indonesia. […] There are debates on how to define sexual violence, it is different [between] the conservative groups and the moderate groups.”
For Alia, the truth is in the numbers. First, she gathered the quantitative data through filtering key terms (#MeToo, for example) which, when charted on a graph, correlated to specific times in which those phrases were especially popular. “I’ve tried to explain ‘Why do people tweet more in this moment and not in the moment?’” This not only reveals how the zeitgeist can regionally define terms like sexual violence, but also the agents responsible for their trajectories.
While her research is squarely focused on journalism as a model for social change, Alia does not ignore the challenges that writers contend with in a struggling industry. “I was a journalist, but it was a long time ago. […] I just thought at the time that I didn’t really fit in the industry- I think because of the high demand and the intense workload.” Her career as a scholar has proven to insight powerful change in its own right; now equipped with a fluency in how sexual violence and other social issues are defined in real time by media users, Alia is able to relay its poignance to her students in Indonesia. To break a pattern, it must be first understood.

“I started to be interested in this issue because of the global MeToo Movement. In the beginning, Indonesian scholars were not convinced that there would be that kind of movement in Indonesia. […] There are debates on how to define sexual violence, it is different [between] the conservative groups and the moderate groups.“
Zachary Andrade is a third-year Honours English student at the University of British Columbia. He is interested in arts and culture within journalism, and has written album reviews for Discorder Magazine. Previously, he served as the editor-in-chief of the Steveston-London Secondary Press. His role as Research Assistant is funded by UBC’s Arts University Research Award (AURA).