Artificial intelligence in Nigerian newsrooms: Navigating jurisdictional hybridization, retreat, and maintenance

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 50 journalists in Nigerian newsrooms, this study examines how artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes journalism through the redistribution of concrete work tasks and professional jurisdiction. Using Abbott’s sociology of professions, we identify three patterns in journalists’ responses to AI: jurisdictional maintenance, hybrid labor configurations, and jurisdictional retreat. Journalists primarily use AI for transcription, copyediting, and preliminary drafting—tasks previously embedded in editorial workflows and professional training. While journalists retain final editorial authority, these tasks are increasingly delegated to AI systems, altering how professional judgment is exercised and learned. This task redistribution produces hybrid arrangements in which human oversight coexists with automated execution, alongside selective retreat from routinized production work. Theoretically, the present study shows that professional jurisdiction is reconfigured mainly through shifts in task control and knowledge transmission and extends profession theory with evidence from a Majority World newsroom context.