Mike Ananny | Nieman Journalism Lab

Articles by Mike Ananny

Mike Ananny is an associate professor at USC Annenberg, where he researches the public ethics of journalism infrastructures. He is the author of “Networked Press Freedom” (MIT Press) and a faculty affiliate with USC’s Center for Science, Technology, and Public Life. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford, a master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab, and a bachelor’s from the University of Toronto.

@ananny

September 27, 2023

Press freedom means controlling the language of AI

Generative AI systems act like “stochastic parrots,” using statistical models to guess word orders and pixel placements. That’s incompatible with a free press that commands its own words.

February 2, 2021

Journalists are grappling with their relationships to big tech companies. It’s time for academics to do the same.

We’ve debated “access journalism.” Next up: “Access scholarship.”

Toward better tech journalism

“Could technology journalists be in service of something better than more speech, improved content moderation, unbiased algorithms, and consensual surveillance capitalism?”

October 10, 2019

Tech platforms are where public life is increasingly constructed, and their motivations are far from neutral

“Instead of thinking about platform companies as the next generation of newspapers, radio stations, or TV channels, we should see them as entirely new entities that shapeshift constantly. Sometimes they are like cities, newsrooms, post offices, libraries, or utilities — but they are always like advertising firms.”

June 28, 2018

Freedom from what?: It’s time to broaden the definition of a “free press”

“If we see press freedom not as heroic isolations — journalists breaking free to tell truths to the publics they imagine — but as a subtler system of separations and dependencies that make publics, then we might see each era’s types of press freedom as bellwethers for particular visions of the public.”

March 17, 2016

Mike Ananny: It’s time to reimagine the role of a public editor, starting at The New York Times

“To hold future journalism accountable (not simply to describe its dynamics to interested readers), public editors must speak a new language of platform ethics that is part professional journalism, part technology design, all public values.”

August 6, 2013

Invisible hand or thoughtful design? Ownership and influence in the sale of The Washington Post

The modern newspaper owner can exert control over their company through the infrastructure and design of the paper, Ananny argues.

April 23, 2013

Breaking news pragmatically: Some reflections on silence and timing in networked journalism

“It certainly takes courage to speak — but it takes a different kind of courage to be silent, to listen, to trust, and speak when the time is right.”