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This PhD thesis explores the deployment of automated text generation for journalistic purposesȄalso known as automated news or automated journalismȄwithin newsrooms. To evaluate its perceived impacts on the work of media practitioners, I rely on Bourdieuǯs Field theoryǡ but also make use of Actor-network theory to detail its adoption at a more descriptive level. This study is based on various case studies and on a mixed-methods framework that is essentially made of 30 semi-structured interviews conducted with media practitioners, technologists and executives working at 23 news organisations in Europe, North America and Australia; it also involves elements of a netnography as online material and screenshots were analysed as part of this process. My empirical work starts with a descriptive account that includes three case studies: one on the use of automated news to cover COVID-19, another one on BBCǯs experiments with the technology and a last one that shows a cross-national comparison between three media types (i.e., public service media, news agencies and newspapers). I then move on to a more interpretative part where I examine media practitionersǯ reactions to automated news, analysing the challenges of having to rely on external datasets, the importance of acquiring a computational thinking mindset and tensions within and outside the field of journalism for this. My research shows that the use of automated news implies structural changes to journalism practice and cannot be seen as a mere Dztool of the tradedzǤ For practitionersǡ the most challenging part lies with being able to master both the uniqueness of journalistic work and a type of abstract reasoning close to computer programming. However, this could leave some being unable to adapt to this new computational spirit, which seems to be gradually taking root within newsrooms. As for future development of automated news systems, it remains to be seen if media organisations or platforms will have the upper hand in remaining at the centre of it.

In this article we contribute to the emerging field of entrepreneurial journalism education by showing how we have applied a model from newer entrepreneurship education research at Aarhus University in Denmark to a masters’ level course for journalism students. It is a special feature of the course that students follow it whilst they are doing a full-time internship within the media and communication industry, and the course requires students to use their places of internship as the basis for a process of identifying opportunities devising innovative solutions and if possible presenting and implementing the solution. Drawing on focus group interviews and course assignments we explore how students experienced learning entrepreneurship and innovation whilst being immersed in communities of practice. The places of internship functioned as anchors for the students’ entrepreneurship processes by providing access to a wide range of opportunities for development and a real life arena for testing own entreprenurial skills but students did not necessarily develop a strong entrepreneurial identity. Instead they felt that the course made them look at their places of internship in a more critical way and provided them with skills for innovation and entrepreneurship that would be useful in the future.

The 'war on terror', described as the most important framing case of our time, is analysed in this study of elite newspaper coverage primarily in terms of the 'attribution of responsibility' for specific terrorist attacks. This is justified by the role of attribution in terms of 'primary definition', the exertion of political power in the text, and the constitutive role of attribution in public opinion formation. In addition to an analysis of how the coverage 'framed' attribution, the study also attempts to speak to the validity or otherwise of the 'mythical metanarrative' interpretation of the 'war on terror'. The study proceeds to analyse the nature of news sources drawn upon in the coverage, most specifically again with respect to the construction of attribution. The latter necessitates the creation of a novel coding scheme to distinguish the specific nature of attributive 'contributions' by various news sources, and in this manner it is hoped to explicate the nature of the ‘discursive regime’ employed which specified who could speak, what they could speak about, and in what circumstances. The three case studies chosen for analysis are the Bali attacks of 2002, the London attacks of 2005 and the Mumbai attacks of 2006, as reported in the first seven days by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Times of London, The Times of India and The New York Times. The study concludes with the presentation of an explanatory framework that situates the most significant factors influencing newspaper coverage at the ideological, political and media routine levels, before constructing an evaluative framework that judges the coverage by three commonly accepted standards of normative journalistic performance. Finally, a new ‘contingent model’ of primary definition is proposed.