Case study reveals how the journalism AI gap is framed as inevitable technological lag, highlighting how linear progress narratives drive newsroom AI investments.
Key Points
To examine how the 'AI gap' in journalism is discursively constructed and how assumptions about technological progress legitimize specific industry responses.
Conducted a case study of the JournalismAI Academy for Small Newsrooms.
Combined ethnographic observations with semi-structured interviews conducted across 2022–2023 and 2025.
Demonstrated that technological lag is discursively framed as a critical deficit requiring newsroom AI investment.
Identified that assumptions of inevitable, linear technological progress stabilize this framing, shaping and legitimizing specific institutional approaches to AI adoption.