Understanding Media and Information Quality in an Age of Artificial Intelligence, Automation…

Technology has altered the foundations of news and media, and as trust in media continues to decline, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and algorithms have come to play a critical role not only as threats to the integrity and quality of media, but also as a source of potential solutions. The core threats to information quality associated with AI include: Algorithmic curation. Most commonly known as the “filter bubble”...; Bots... permitting propagandists to mount large-scale influence campaigns;... Fake reports and videos...; Targeted behavioral marketing powered by algorithms and machine-learning...
we have repeatedly found bots, Russian influence campaigns, and “fake news” ... found these technologically-mediated phenomena to be background noise, rather than a major driver ... risks masking the real political-cultural dynamics that have confounded American political communication....
The springboard for our research is a... Media Cloud enables us to discover media network structures that form around specific topics and to shed light on media frames, attention, and influence.... focused attention on the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on political public media... Here we summarize our preliminary conclusions...
political and social factors, not technology, are at the root of current media and information quality problems... not a simple left-right division in American political media. Instead, the divide is between the right and the rest of the political media spectrum...
media structures on the center and center-left provide a barrier against further propagation and a check on shoddy reporting from the left.... leading media in the right-wing cluster follow a distinctly different strategy, and repeatedly amplify and accredit, rather than dampen or correct...
if filter bubbles ... were the primary reason for polarization, we would expect to see symmetric patterns of attention... The stark asymmetry ... strongly suggests that differences in political culture and... institutionally-driven media history of right-wing media... drove the right into ... the propaganda feedback loop...
our macro-level observations leave us skeptical as to the importance of bots...
 there is scant evidence that false media stories have any impact in changing behavior. A prime example is Russian efforts to influence election-related discourse... current numbers draw into question the true significance of their reach... social identity, much more than any technical indicia of truth, are the foundation for beliefs and attitudes about political matters...
It doesn’t look like AI is coming to the rescue anytime soon, if ever... stories built around a kernel of true facts, framed and interpreted in materially misleading ways are more important than stories made of clear falsifiable claims... Systemic responses are required to address systemic issues