News Story

New grant from the Open Societal Challenges programme to support research into innovative AI methods for assessing equity, balance, and inclusivity in the media landscape

Nancy Pontika, Tuesday 26 Mar 2024

KMi’s grant from the Open Societal Challenge (OSC) aims to enhance our capacity to model the ebb and flow of perspectives within news narratives. Despite the prevalence of social media, traditional news outlets remain essential for informing the public and ideally presenting a balanced array of viewpoints pertinent to democratic discourse. This diversity of perspectives, crucial for a democratic media landscape, is often lacking in the UK’s media environment, where hyper-partisan sources dominate the agenda.

This imbalance not only perpetuates societal inequalities but also distorts public discourse, as seen in the disproportionate circulation of pro-Brexit newspapers during the Brexit campaign. While these issues have been subject to scrutiny in social sciences and humanities, manual content analysis remains the norm, hindering comprehensive assessments of media fairness.

The OSC initiative seeks to bridge this gap by harnessing AI to analyze news content at scale. By accurately identifying various actors and positions expressed in media, clustering them into meaningful categories, and tracking their evolution over time, the project aims to provide valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and media watchdogs. These innovations have the potential to enhance media accountability, inform policy decisions, and ultimately bolster democratic discourse.

For more information visit the Challenge page.