Robot reporters aren’t coming for all of your jobs just yet. But, it’s important to understand how automation is affecting journalism now. You should also start understanding how mixed-reality technology can help you tell stories in an immersive and impactful way.
Artificial Intelligence and Fake News
Instead of being scared of this inevitable innovation, you should learn how to use automation to make your job more efficient. Automated data analysis may give you more time to delve deeper and report on context.
But, you have to be careful, AI can make it much harder to tell truth from fake news. Watch this PSA comedian Jordan Peele made with BuzzFeed using Adobe After Effects and the AI face-swapping tool FakeApp.
This should serve as a reminder to always question something before you share it.
Augmented Reality Storytelling
Some TV news stations are starting to incorporate mixed-reality storytelling onto their sets to help visualize stories. Journalists should stay on top of these innovations to better learn how to tell stories in new ways. Mixed reality shouldn’t just look cool, it should be used intentionally. Take a look at how these stations strategically use augmented reality.
Augmented reality is proving to have a much greater effect on viewers. It’s literally helping save people’s lives. Journalists are constantly warning people to evacuate during hurricanes. A nine-foot storm surge doesn’t sound that bad. But, when people see what that really looks like in AR, they’re more likely to take the warning seriously.
USF’s Innovative Education department is using augmented reality to tell engaging stories like this:
360 Storytelling
Frontline took mixed-reality storytelling to the next level by incorporating 360 cameras. They published a guide for best practices that explains how mixed reality is evolving.
360 can be particularly powerful because it can be used with virtual reality headsets. When people wear these headsets, it immerses them into another world. Transporting viewers in this way has the power to dramatically increase their empathy and compassion.
Here are some examples of the videos they created using 360 cameras, augmented and virtual reality.
Artificial Intelligence Reporting
Some outlets are using new technologies to program “robots” to write news articles.
When Journalism Meets Technology
Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab, spoke at the Seoul Digital Forum in Oct. 2015 about this.
Additional Resources:
The Anatomy of a Robot Journalist
Download AP’s full report: ap_insights_the_future_of_augmented_journalism
Feature image courtesy: The Weather Channel
360 Photography
Here’s an example of a 360 photo you can embed into WordPress using the shortcode:
You would replace “path-to-photo.jpg ” with your own image URL and WordPress will automatically display a 360 photo player.