From Typewriters to Algorithms

How AI is Redefining Journalistic Processes in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper interrogates how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the labour, ethics, and professional journalism in the fragile media economy in Nigeria. Although the global community upholds AI as the key to efficiency, the situation in Nigeria uncovers some underlying contradictions between automation and autonomy, at which layered precarity, ethical ambiguity, and data colonialism are prone to become more acute due to technological dependence. This position paper is aimed at critically analyzing the implications of AI-driven automation on newsroom practices and power relations, putting them within the context of socio-economic and cultural realities of Nigeria. Based on the Political Economy of Communication and Actor Network Theory, the paper posit that AI is not just a tool but rather an agent in restructuring the journalistic practices, ownership and epistemic power. It argues that the experience of AI in Nigeria presents a two-sided process of empowerment by technological innovation and displacement by capitalistic rationalisation. The article adds to the current scholarship in Africa as it suggests a Human-AI Collaborative Newsroom Model, which is based on ethical innovation, situational inclusivity, and cultural sovereignty. It suggests that Nigerian journalism needs to overcome the passive reception and develop technological autonomy by developing local AI systems, providing ethical education, and revising policy. Essentially, it is argued that journalism can survive the algorithmic age not by opposing automation but by reasserting their moral and cultural agency in a way that machines are not substituting the truth but supporting it.