SINGAPORE – Amid rapid development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), respondents to a survey say they are suspicious of the use of AI in journalism.
In addition to having to grapple with AI, several other key challenges facing the news media in 2024 include news avoidance and fatigue that have reached record levels, the survey highlighted.
According to the Digital News Report published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, which was launched in Asia on June 21, only 36 per cent of those surveyed say they feel comfortable using news made by humans with the help of AI. An even smaller proportion – just 19 per cent – are comfortable using news made mostly by AI with human oversight.
The report cautions newsrooms to tread carefully, given concerns about how publishers experimenting with AI may impact public trust in news.
“As publishers rapidly adopt AI to make their businesses more efficient and to personalise content, our research suggests they need to proceed with caution, as the public generally wants humans in the driving seat at all times,” the report said.
“There is more comfort with the use of AI in behind-the-scenes tasks such as transcription and translation, in supporting rather than replacing journalists,” the report added.
This is the first time the report, produced annually, has taken a detailed look at consumer attitudes towards the use of AI in news. It commissioned surveys on AI in the US, Britain and Mexico alongside a broader survey on news consumption conducted in 47 countries.
On the topic of news avoidance, it found that around 39 per cent of those surveyed, up 10 percentage points from 2019, said they sometimes or often selectively avoid the news, as it is not only “depressing” but also “relentless”. This is also the highest level of news avoidance recorded since the report was first published in 2012.
The report noted the increased usage of smartphones, push notifications from a plethora of apps, as well as algorithm-based platform feeds as potential reasons for this fatigue.
Another challenge facing news organisations is the general unwillingness of audiences to pay for news subscriptions, with just 17 per cent of people surveyed from a basket of 20 richer countries saying they paid for any online news in the last year.
The report added that the prospects of attracting new subscribers remain limited by a continued reluctance to pay for news, linked to low interest and an abundance of free sources.
A further challenge is that news use across online platforms is fragmenting, buoyed by the strong shift towards video-based networks such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, all of which have grown in importance for news since the Covid-19 pandemic drove new habits.
YouTube is used for news by almost 31 per cent of global audiences each week and WhatsApp by around 21 per cent, while TikTok, at 13 per cent, has overtaken Twitter (now rebranded X) at 10 per cent, for the first time.
Audience concerns about fake news also went up by 3 percentage points to 59 per cent, where issues like politics, economics and the Israel-Palestine conflict and Ukraine war raised the most concern about false or misleading information. Worries about how to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy content on online platforms are highest for TikTok and X when compared with other online networks, the report said.
The report also found that trust in the news remained steady at 40 per cent. However, this is still 4 per cent lower than it was at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Legacy media remains most trusted news brands in Singapore
In Singapore, mainstream outlets remained the most trusted news brands. Trust in the news increased to 47 per cent in 2024, up from 45 per cent in 2023, with The Straits Times (73 per cent) and CNA (74 per cent) being the most trusted by audiences.
ST also had the highest offline reach at 36 per cent, followed by CNA at 33 per cent, and Channel 5 at 25 per cent.
Mothership and CNA were the most used online news websites in terms of weekly online reach, tied at 46 per cent. This was followed by ST’s website at 41 per cent.
Online and social media remained the most common ways of accessing news in Singapore at 82 per cent and 63 per cent, while TV and print declined to 46 per cent and 13 per cent, with most survey participants not paying for news.
Referencing ongoing studies, Professor Edson C. Tandoc Jr, who is co-author of the Digital News Report’s country page on Singapore, noted that readers are looking for an institutional source, and trust in legacy media is high.
“Whether it’s generated by AI or not, we find that people trust the story if it’s by one of the legacy brands like ST or CNA,” said Prof Edson, who is from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University.
“Singaporeans recognise that the mainstream media in Singapore is closely regulated by the Government, but at the same time, the trust is high enough to override the impact of whether it’s AI or human – they still look at the organisation.”
He added that the impact of AI is not being seen yet, as not many local publications are utilising AI bylines.
“Some parts of the news process are being automated, but the ownership of the article is still by the human author.”
For the latest edition of the report, the Reuters Institute worked with online research firm YouGov to poll 94,943 adults across the world in January and February. This included 2,013 people in Singapore.
In describing its methodology, it noted that because the survey was done on a non-random sample of the population, differences of 2 percentage points or less “should be interpreted with a very high degree of caution”. The institute also said that some of the results “will not match industry data, which is often based on different methodologies, such as web-tracking”.
Join ST’s WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.