T.J. Thomson was a fellow at CAIS from July to September 2024. As part of his fellowship, he and his team conducted interviews with 60 news consumers in Germany and Australia. The aim of the study was to examine their experiences with AI in the news context, identify perceived ethical and legal issues, and capture their expectations of how news organizations should use AI. The results of the study were published in April 2026 in the article “News audiences’ acceptance of generative artificial intelligence in journalism: a use case study across three domains.”
Abstract of the Article
News audiences’ acceptance of generative AI (GenAI) in journalism is shaped by their knowledge of (or direct experience with) what AI is, what it can do, and what implications its use has. Acknowledging this, the present study draws on the technology acceptance model to first explore what a sample of news audiences in two countries knows about GenAI and what their experiences, if any, with it have been to date. Next, it explores this sample’s acceptance of use cases that demonstrate how AI is – or could be – used in journalism. It does this by using in-depth interviews with 60 participants to introduce or re-introduce 23 use cases to them and ask them how accepting they are of journalists using each. Acceptance depended on how AI was used, how transparent the use was, whether the use impacted accuracy, and whether legal and other ethical considerations were appropriately attended to.
Thomson, T. J., Thomas, R. J., Cools, H., Anderson, R., Venema, R., Toohey, O., Gardam, C., Strikovic, E., Riedlinger, M., & Burgess, J. (2026). News audiences’ acceptance of generative artificial intelligence in journalism: A use case study across three domains. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X261441933