2026/02/26 by Besjon Cifliku, Hendrik Heuer · 1 voice
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Citizen journalism #Computational and Text Analysis Methods #Context (archaeology) #Journalism #Leverage (statistics) #Media Studies and Communication #Newspaper #Perspective (graphical) #Process (computing) #Revenue #Social Media and Politics #Work (physics) #cs.CY #cs.HC
paper · pdf · doi:10.1145/3772318.3791130
arxiv published 2026/02/26 · arxiv updated 2026/02/26 · openalex created_date 2026/02/28 · openalex publication_date 2026/04/13 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Declining newspaper revenues prompt local newsrooms to adopt automation to maintain efficiency and keep the community informed. However, current research provides a limited understanding of how local journalists work with digital data and which newsroom processes would benefit most from AI-supported (data) reporting. To bridge this gap, we conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with local journalists in Germany. Our study investigates how local journalists use data and AI (RQ1); the challenges they encounter when interacting with data and AI (RQ2); and the self-perceived opportunities of AI-supported reporting systems through the lens of discursive design (RQ3). Our findings reveal that local journalists do not fully leverage AI’s potential to support data-related work. Despite local journalists’ limited awareness of AI’s capabilities, they are willing to use it to process data and discover stories. Finally, we provide recommendations for improving AI-supported reporting in the context of local news, grounded in the journalists’ socio-technical perspective and their imagined AI future capabilities.