FW-HTF-P: Planning to study automation and the future of news production

这笔规划赠款支持多学科团队建设和完善研究计划，以便对涉及人类和技术的未来工作进行汇聚研究。具体的焦点是记者的工作，他们创造文章、视频和其他内容来告知公众。长期以来，新闻业一直受到新技术的影响，包括印刷、互联网分发和以社交媒体新闻馈送的形式自动管理。能够创建文本、统计数据、视频、图表和数据驱动动画的新兴人工智能技术预计将进一步影响该行业。了解这些影响很重要，因为记者履行着重要的社会职能，告知公众影响他们决策的事件和活动。该项目召集了一个跨学科的学者团队，以制定一项持续研究的提案，以解决新闻生产的未来，考虑到广泛的自然语言处理、众包、信息可视化和人工智能等技术。团队成员的背景涵盖了一系列学科领域，包括信息科学、计算机科学、经济学、社会学、通信和设计。计划的工作包括完善项目愿景和理论框架，招募外地站点和咨询委员会，进行试点研究以确定相关技术和影响，以及规划汇聚研究活动。试点研究将包括与记者的观察、采访和焦点小组，以了解当前技术的影响和未来技术的可能性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This planning grant supports multidisciplinary teambuilding and the refinement of a research plan for convergent research on the future of work involving humans and technology. The specific focus is the work of journalists who create articles, videos and other content to inform the public. Journalism has long been affected by new technologies, including printing, internet distribution, and automated curation, in the form of social media news feeds. Emerging artificial intelligence technologies capable of creating texts, statistics, videos, diagrams and data-driven animations are anticipated to further impact the profession. Understanding these impacts is important because journalists perform the socially important function of informing the public about events and activities that affect their decision making. This project convenes an interdisciplinary team of scholars to a develop a proposal for sustained research addressing the future of news production, considering technologies such as natural language processing, crowdsourcing, information visualization, and artificial intelligence, taken broadly. The team members’ backgrounds span a range of disciplinary areas, including information science, computer science, economics, sociology, communications, and design. The planned work includes refining the project vision and theoretical framework, recruiting field sites and an advisory board, conducting pilot research to identify relevant technologies and impacts and planning of convergent research activities. Pilot research will include observation, interviews and focus groups with journalists to understand the impact of current technologies and possibilities for future technologies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.