Communication professors Matt Binford, Candy Noltensmeyer and Katerina Spasovska have begun the next phase of their research project which will explore how people across the country understand the news and determine credibility, and how Artificial Intelligence changes this.
“What we’re really looking at is once we tell them one of the articles is AI, how does our assumptions about AI, and what it can produce, what it does produce, our experiences, as well as cultural understandings, influence how we make meaning of this,” said Noltensmeyer.
After gaining approval from the Institutional Review Board, Binford, Spasovska and Noltensmeyer are preparing to launch a survey that will be accessible by people all over the country. This survey involves the participant to read news articles and answer questions about the author’s perceived credibility, and to decide whether that perceived credibility changes if the author is AI. The professors are hoping to have 250 participants take their survey.
Once the data from the survey has been analyzed, the results will be submitted to a communication conference.
This research is an extension of two previous studies that explored what cues students use to identify bias and credibility in the news after reading two news stories. The first phase was conducted in a few classrooms, and the second was a more methodical, expanded version of that research across COMM 201 classes at WCU. The previous phases focused on student meaning making and learning how they recognize what articles are credible or not. The previous studies are currently being written up for publication in a teaching journal.
The professors believe that using research to improve the quality of their students’ learning will help provide students with a high standard of education and improve their teaching process in the communication department.
“[AI] is part of the business now. Like it or not, it’s part of the business, and we have to teach students all aspects of that. And we’re always improving our teaching, how to talk to students about it, and what experiences look like. So this research on our students, in particular, is showing us what our students are learning,” said Noltensmeyer.