1) What role will AI play in newsrooms in the next five years?

The role of AI will be transformative. This is not a step-change as we have seen with the introduction of other technologies (who remembers Cybergraphics?). But nor is it technological determinism whereby journalists and media organisations necessarily lose agency. As AI and its algorithms threaten to decouple publishers from their readers, by providing summaries that limit click throughs to primary news sites, media organisations need to be on the front foot with AI companies. We learn from the mistakes of the social media and search age whereby compensation deals were too tardy and time-limited in their policy design. Building brand (understanding what you do best) and audience trust in that brand, is critical now and in the next five years.

This is the opportunity to harness the technology and to use the benefits that flow from it such as Armando.info’s environmental journalists who are using satellite imagery with AI machine learning to expose illegal mining across the Amazon. It is also about backend operations: improving workflows and efficiencies so that journalists can do journalism. In both cases, it is vital to ensure human oversight and critical thinking. This is paramount, as we are seeing a steep uptake in how organisations and individuals are using AI – over a billion users a week, globally – and clearly not all of it is best practice. Many media organisations still do not have developed policies on how to manage AI use in their newsrooms: defining what is, and is not ethical use, of these powerful tools.

We must learn the lessons from the search and social media age and ensure AI companies adequately compensate news outlets for their original reporting that forms the corpus of AI’s high quality training data. We must insist that our governments ensure policy conducive to a sustainable business model for news outlets, and to also put in place adequate regulatory guardrails to protect news outlets from power imbalances and dependencies. Our democracy depends on high quality, accountable information in order to have an informed citizenry to make informed choices, especially at the ballot box.

2) How much disinformation should journalists expect in this year's state election campaign and the next federal election?

Some – but probably not of the volume that is anticipated. Election research shows that while 94 per cent of the public perceives they are encountering electoral misinformation about policies, processes and politicians, numerous studies show this amounts to a small part of an individual’s news and information diet. What we can expect are new applications of misinformation (spread of falsehoods) and disinformation (deliberate spread of falsehoods) using AI generated content. But studies also show politicians and their third party campaigners play a significant role in spreading disinformation during elections. Journalists play a critical role in calling this out and holding the spreaders to account.

3) How best do journalists prepare themselves for that?

Journalists already have many of the skills to deal with mis- and disinformation spread. This includes techniques to verify sources. Offering transparency about the reporting process and using explainer pieces and fact checking to help voters and audiences navigate through the polluted information environment. This may involve setting up dedicated election sites to parse election claims. Journalists can also work cooperatively with neutral bodies such as the Victorian Election Commission to verify falsehoods and to reassert accurate information about the election.

4) What tools does a journalist need when they start their career?

This was said when I started as a journalist at The Age (a long time ago now when the long lunch was still a thing) and I still hold it to be true: Curiosity is key. To that, I would add perseverance – not giving up easily. One of the dangers of the information abundance age is accepting information without interrogating it. By this I mean, resist accepting an email response. Pick up the phone and have a conversation with the interviewee. Better still, meet them in person. It’s the key way to crosscheck and verify claims by subjecting them to robust but civil questioning. We can also harness the tools of the AI age to help with verification – but this is best used as part of a process, rather than the endpoint.

5) How does journalism education respond to the challenges of the rapidly changing media landscape?

Working with industry is essential. Working journalists are at the coalface and have first-hand experience of the information environment and how the needs of the audience might be changing. Universities have the resources, methodologies and expertise to incorporate that knowledge alongside empirical research to advance our understandings of the functions of journalism in society, its capacity to mitigate misinformation, and its linkage to democratic well-being. Working with industry, ensures a piece of the puzzle is not missed and that teaching journalism remains evidence-based, interesting and relevant to the next generation of journalists. 

Professor Carson is an award-winning political scientist and journalist (The Age and ABC). Her research examines the media ecosystem and its impact on democracy, and she advises governments, think tanks and platforms. She was a research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford in 2024 and has extensively published and taught on investigative journalism, misinformation, election campaigns, and gender equality. She is the recipient of three Australian Research Council grants on political trust, public policy responsiveness and women's representation in local government. She is a research fellow of the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia and served as President of the Australian Political Studies Association. She is the author of six books, her latest is Women's Pathways to Power: Cracking the Glass Ceiling (New York: Routledge, 2026).