 Hello once again. Let's talk about media and communication. We're going to be looking today at Google News Initiative and its impact on journalism in Africa and in the Middle East. And we are going to talk with our guest today, Mathias Sensch. He's from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the Federal University of São Paulo in Brazil. And Mathias will jump into that very soon. We'll argue, we'll tell us that Google News Initiative is building an infrastructure of power, of dependency that could actually pose some risks to responsible innovation in journalism. I'm going to question Mathias very soon. We will explore this. If this infrastructure could be used to control the flow of information, to undermine the independence of the news media. So let's talk about it. Mathias, welcome to our episode. Thank you for the invitation. I'm really happy to be here on behalf of my co-authors to share a bit of what you have done in the last months in years to be honest. Perfect. This research actually is featured in some news outlets throughout the world. So let us know about why this topic received so much attention. Yeah, this is a really important topic. When we think about the media today, we know that there is like this very strong ties with the big tech companies. The big tech companies, mainly Facebook which is Meta now, right? And Google and this dependence on the big techs are putting the media, mainly the media innovation at serious risk. And why? Because there is a balance of power dynamics that disadvantage for media organizations which are not that strong, don't have a lot of resources. And when we are talking about Africa and Middle East, this is particularly important because when we think about the studies and they are generally focused on US and then we have some of Europe as well. And we have another scenario. So a scenario that organizations tend to have more money and some people are interested in paying for that. While in Africa, there are other more societal issues. And that's would attract way more interest of these people than paying for news, for example. Although news are really important for the democratic issues that they have in this region and only in Africa, but also Middle East and other parts in the global south. Besides that, there is also a large part of organizations that are really struggling to bring technology innovation to their newsrooms. And not only in Africa and Middle East, but around the globe. And I think that's one of the things that also attract attention because these grants are the ones that they are using to deploying these technology innovations. And usually when we're talking about smaller news outlets their money come from philanthropic organizations and they have their own agenda, their own interests. And usually it's not like helping these organizations to bring technology for or emerging technology like AI for their business model. And this is something that makes really hard for these organizations to deploy in these new tools or solutions using these innovations or emerging technology. So, and the focus is on Africa. As you said, this geographical context with a completely different financial, economic context. So when you started this research what were you hoping to find here? So what was your expectation when you started the research? Oh yeah, when we started doing this study it was more to understand what is the technological innovation in this region? But then we faced a lot of issues because first we saw that there is very Africa is a really big continent and you have like very different level of developments in the country. And we as we are covering Africa and Middle East this is also another issue because you know we have way more research in the Middle East than Africa. So the first thing that was really surprising for us is that like Middle East are trying to bring these emerging technology as I mentioned AI like in really like strong projects that use machine learning and other subfields of AI. While in Africa some of these projects were really basic and trying to bring this basic technology just like somehow strong their strategy their digital strategy. There was one project that I remember and it wasn't one of the first that we conducted an interview and they were really trying to establish a website, a CMS that could connect the requests for like because they're like collecting pitching from young journalists and they didn't have that that you're using before like a simple Google Forms and then they have like this website so they could showcase what they are doing. This is something basic and when you look for what are being developed in other newsrooms were like trying, for example in Lebanon we have a newsroom that was although they were struggling because of the language was really challenging they were trying to like using machine learning to understand what are being disseminated about this information and this information Twitter, for example. And so these creepings of the level of development and technology in this project were something that really attracted my attention. The other thing that was like a bit surprised to me but not really a surprise but it was really emphasized by these respondents was the lack of like staff that they could hire to work in this organization because they were competing with fintechs or organizations that are US and Europe which the sellers are really higher and these grants are co-founded so part of this money comes from the organization which is really hard for them so and then when they need to put like really high sellers these grants are really short and so that's another thing that I was like really surprised throughout the process and we are expecting to hear a lot of these struggles to have these people board paying their sellers but not competing with other industries that are way more stronger than the news media. So we have in one way a diverse background in newsrooms that you found in our interviews this lack as well of financial capacity so let us know now after all this the most important findings of your research. Yes, so the main findings is that in our opinion these big techs are the main custodians of the cutting-edge technology that we have today so what happened for example artificial intelligence that is now everyone's talking about after the buzz of this generative AI so they have muscles to develop that, deploy that and when we are talking about media so they need to learn that, bring to their business model and then when we talk about the structure of this organization they don't have technological teams that are really focused on bringing these technologies so these grants help them to hurry these people but it is just for one year so it's a really short period of time so when you see the description of the project they seem like very interesting, very complex but then when they get the grant and then they start implementing this project they realize that these projects are way more complex than what they proposed back there and what happened is that they need to make this a minimal bio-product or what I mean by that so a small version of that tests that and trying to see how they can continue deploying this project further although some of these projects were still available we saw that some of them still have bugs and they really require money to continue expanding and work on that so that's something that I believe that one of the main finances of this project is trying to see how these organizations can continue to develop this emerging technology which is going to be really important in media innovation in general for their business strategy and when we see these projects there is a huge potential to bring some news but part of the news value change that and help journalists to focus on other tasks but without the money and the support for a long term these projects will end and some of the examples that we found there was like that so they couldn't continue that later because the money was not enough and also as I mentioned requiring them to pay higher salaries and really specialize skills that sometimes is really hard for them to have that inside the newsrooms or even inside their country and then they need to go to other countries to hire these people and the last thing that I think is really important to highlight is that these organizations need to train these people as well to understand what journalism is how they could work with journalism this requires a lot of time so during this one year so they need to put these people that are really from the tech background to understand what is journalism what are the news products that they're trying to develop then after one year they cannot continue paying their salaries and then they go to other industries and it's also an investment that is going you know and like being throw away yeah so these are some of the main findings but yeah definitely you can find more on our paper of course this makes me brainstorm a bit brainstorm together about potential practical implications that we can look at from now on so is there something that either the governments or any organizations can do to empower more the newsroom or is there something that the newsroom by themselves can do to empower themselves or something connected to this question of media literacy that you were also addressing so I'm curious to know about policy implications now what can you tell us yes definitely there is a lot of policy implications for that first is like innovation through big tech companies I think governments can you know like push them to like if they are funding the journalism they are paying for the journalism they pay properly not only just small grants or programs that are being trained for them but something that is more structured at the same time I think organizations also need to work together you know to be strong and then when they have these organizations that these big tech companies that have a lot of power that's the only way that they can you know like try to balance this power and I think media innovation is going to be something really important for the future of media and I think working together they can diminish these barriers to you know develop some of this project and also you know exchange resources that are not easy to find as was mentioned and lastly I think it's really really important we rethink you know about you know AI and technology and thinking that this is really important to have you know in the curriculums of you know like these journalism courses and also prepare journalists that are writing the market for they understand what is AI because it's not about only understanding you know what is AI but how you can bring that for the news product and trying to bridge these two topics it's quite complex and not only require it's time for you know structurally understanding what have been deployed around the world but also it's important for you know these professionals to you know understand what are the issues that they can tackle using these AI solutions and what is not possible because sometimes you know there is also this trend to oh everything you need to use AI or emerging technology or everything you need to use no technology so but it's not necessary and only if you have the knowledge and the resources necessary you can do that and in a proper way and what are some hints for future research because there's a bit of some topics here that we could address so looking ahead research wise so what are some hints for future research now definitely there is a lot of topics that could be explored for for example one thing that we are trying to explore further because this is part of a large project you see how these technologists are being you know deployed with these grants in around the world and mainly in the global south because something that happened with specifically with the google news initiative innovation challenge it started you know mainly in latin america north america and then africa middle east and then asia pacific europe now has a version of that and so you see a lot of projects being deployed in using these grants but what are the difference across these regions what are the countries that are being these emerging technologists how they are using that so what are the best practices that other organizations can learn from that so that's something that we're trying to look first from the global south perspective would be very interesting to look also in you know the north america because it's a lot of grants that were being given to this region that is not north america but also only u.s and canada so it's the region that has a different you know like media system it's quite local news it's quite strong in some regions and you see a lot of money going to that also it's really important to understand you know like how these emerging technologists we have this imbalance of power and how these infrastructure are being deployed by these organizations and how these organizations are influencing you know media companies because some of these tools are really complex and you know you have to train data and etc and media organizations don't have all the resources to do that and how we can you know like collaborate with this big tech and how they can like somehow help these organizations with their infrastructure and the power that they have to train data and you know like something that would be more useful for media and i think there is also a lot of to explore in relation to the literacy as we are discussing you know how these different regions different countries are understanding the AI literacy and for example some of these countries they didn't receive any you know grant from google and why they are not receiving you know they are not aware of because you need to propose right to google and they're struggling to understand how to bring these emerging technologies to their newsrooms and if so how we can help them to you know understand the use of that and how we can prepare them for the future because the right that you always be like running you know to like competing with other organizations that are way more developed than them of course i mentioned before that this research has been as was featured in some news outlets around the world but for those who are watching us on the let's talk about media and communication website below the video you will be you will have access to some of these resources and Matisse i would like to ask you now if there are there is any other material that you could share with our listeners to further explore this topic definitely so one of my co-authors harris and have been he wrote a really interesting article you know looking for all the grants that were being given by these two big techs around the world is something that's very interesting there's a lot of you know discussion about the media capture from this big tech with something i also recommend people read about that and also about this power unbalanced of big techs and news organizations there are a lot of books on that but yeah i'm happy to feel free to reach me out and then i can also share some other links thank you for the invitation sure um so we have we have tried to approach a very wide complex topic here but i would like to close this episode by asking you to tell us in one or two sentences what should our audience remember about this talk so what's the punchline yes so what people should remember about this topic is that something that is not easy to solve but i think it's some it's really important we start discussing about that and mainly from perspective from regions that are not being real you know like really considerate or studied and in this case african middle east give you know a lot of insights about that because you know it's a region which different level of development using these technologies and so if we start discussing that and also about the infrastructure of big techs i think it's the first step to change that you know and also help these organizations to prepare them for the future using no media innovation technology and etc matias it was a pleasure thank you thank you for an invitation for those watching us on youtube you can find all the resources that i mentioned before all the materials the link to the article on the let's talk about media and communication websites and you can also listen to this episode wherever you get your podcast you can subscribe to our newsletter you can follow us on twitter at kojitatu lta several ways to to engage with us