UniversIActualidad: Artificial Intelligence as an Effective Tool Against Journalism Students’ Disinterest in Current Affairs

Nowadays, artificial intelligence, or AI, encompasses all stages of journalism, including the identification of newsworthy topics and events, data analysis and interpretation, personalized content distribution, and the automated production of both textual and audiovisual content. Consequently, academia has the responsibility of adapting to this new situation and educating future journalists in the ethical and effective use of artificial intelligence in their discipline. A survey was conducted among 305 journalism students at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), in order to assess their interest in current affairs, sources of information used, and their perception of whether or not AI is a useful tool for accessing news content. In addition, a pilot project was devised, also involving artificial intelligence, which allowed students to receive a daily, automated news summary featuring the most relevant stories published in pre-selected, benchmark newspapers. As for the results, they were highly inconsistent, failing to reveal even one behavioral pattern. Nevertheless, the attitude of the students toward the AI instrument was very positive.