The Future of Journalism

Independent Journalists Association of Serbia and US Embassy, December 2022 – May 2023.

“The Future of Journalism” project lasted for six months from December 2022 to May 2023. Within the project, 10 analitical texts about different topics of the future of journalism were written and published on NSSJ’s website. In the last month of the project, NSSJ organized professional gathering of journalists and media experts in order to tackle all challenges which journalism will face in future.

Topics on which journalists, communication specialists and other media experts wrote were: constructive journalism vs traditional journalism, the values and pitfalls of citizen journalism in the digital era, Google’s algorithms as new gatekeepers, the capacity of artificial intelligence in performing journalistic tasks, the scope of immersive journalism, the role of social networks in verifying content and combating disinformation, educating journalists for the future, deepfake content and verification possibilities, weakening of audience concentration and focus, business models for the media.

On 23th May 2023, the professional gathering for 23 journalists and media experts was organized in Novi Sad. The event consisted of a panel session where Tanja Maksić from Birn, Ivan Subotić from FakeNews Tragača and Aleksandra Krstić from FPN spoke about the problems and challenges of journalism in the future, as well as pf a round table where all the participants of the event discussed about potential models for overcoming challenges and problems in journalism in the future. The conclusion of this professional gathering was that although the development of artificial intelligence affects journalism and requires changes in the way of work, journalism and journalists who work in the interest of the public will survive if conditions are created for artificial intelligence to be used purposefully in work. Some of the potential models for overcoming challenges in journalism in the future identified at the round table were: labeling content generated by artificial intelligence, defining ethical guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence in content creation, involving the audience in order to collect sources and regulation of social networks.

Aim of the project was to raise awereness on all challenges facing journalism in future and also to identify models on how to overcome them.

Primary target group of the project were journalists, editors, communicologists, media experts, media NGOs representatives, media managers, and journalism students. Secondary target group of the project were citizens of Serbia as media consumers.