Aftonbladet puts its own gender bias under an AI microscope
Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet fed 120,000 of its articles into an AI-powered tool that could analyze text, video and images for patterns around gender representation.
Here's what they found, though please excuse the possibly-janky Google translation:
The survey shows that we have a dominance of men in our news feed, while women are more often seen in connection with "soft" issues. In our publications on social media, such as Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok, we see a significantly better representation and balance. We can also see that our journalism succeeds quite well in reflecting the population when it comes to a diversity perspective.
The tool used was created by Danish start-up MediaCatch, writes Martin Schori, a reporter on Aftonbladet's new 7-strong AI team. He adds (again, Google translated):
Part of the skewed gender balance is difficult for the media and Aftonbladet to change. Journalism's task is to report on major news events in the world and in Sweden, wars and conflicts, business, crime and politics. Areas that have traditionally been male-dominated. But in other cases, it's about challenging old habits and working actively to bring more types of voices into our journalism.