The UNESCO Chair on Media and Information Literacy for Quality Journalism at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona is launching an international research programme with the university’s Communication and Education Research Group and through the UNESCO UNITWIN MILID Network. The programme will examine how AI is changing journalism and what universities can do now to prepare the people who will practise it.
When an AI assistant answers a question about the news, who did the original reporting? Can the reader trace the answer to its sources? Who corrects it when something goes wrong? These questions reach from the newsroom to the classroom. They concern what journalists do, how their work reaches the public and what students need to learn before they enter the profession.
The Future of Journalism Education in the Age of AI brings those questions into a single research programme. It will study how AI affects newsroom practices, employment, professional roles, business models and access to news. It will also examine how expectations about AI influence decisions in newsrooms and universities. Those decisions matter because the way institutions respond today will help shape the profession that graduates enter tomorrow.
From observable tensions to possible futures
The research begins with three tensions already visible in journalism. The first, spectacularisation and understanding, concerns how newsrooms use their resources. Will AI help reporters investigate more deeply and explain complex events, or will its main effect be to increase the volume of content? The second, concealment and transparency, concerns whether people can identify the sources behind an answer, understand how it was produced and know who is accountable for errors. The third, fragmentation and integration, concerns who has access to reliable reporting and whether people in different communities can establish enough common ground to debate shared problems.
Researchers will use common indicators to observe these tensions and develop scenarios for 2036. The programme will explore global, national and regional scenarios. The same AI tools may have different consequences in places with different media markets, languages, regulatory frameworks and traditions of public service journalism. Comparing those settings will help identify which professional capabilities are valuable across several futures and which responses need to be designed locally.
One of the first tasks will be to study how undergraduate and master’s programmes in journalism address AI. Teams will compare what curricula and course guides say with what educators report teaching and assessing. The programme also draws on contributions from Educating Journalists in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, the first workshop on the subject organised by the UAB’s Communication and Education Research Group. Held at the UAB Faculty of Communication Sciences on 6 November 2026 as part of the IA-COM and OI2 projects, the workshop brought educators, researchers and practitioners together to discuss professional competencies, teaching practices and the university’s responsibility for developing critical and ethical judgement.
What UNESCO’s work on AI means for journalism education
The programme builds on a policy agenda that UNESCO has developed through its 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, its 2023 guidance on generative AI in education and research, and its 2024 AI competency frameworks for teachers and students. Together, these initiatives put human agency, critical judgement and accountability at the centre of AI education. UNESCO’s journalism education work also includes Reporting on Artificial Intelligence, a handbook that helps educators teach students to investigate AI as a matter of public interest.
The latest addition is AI Answers. You Decide, a companion to UNESCO’s Media and Information Literacy Curriculum announced on 10 November 2026. It gives educators practical ways to help learners evaluate AI-generated information and examine how AI affects journalism, access to knowledge and human rights. The UAB programme takes up a related question for professional education. How can future journalists learn to use AI in their own work, scrutinise the institutions that build and deploy it, and explain its role to the public?
Why quality journalism belongs in democratic infrastructure
The UNESCO Chair on Media and Information Literacy for Quality Journalism, established at the UAB in 2018 and held by José Manuel Pérez Tornero, brings together research on journalism, media and information literacy, and media pluralism. Its premise is that quality journalism forms part of the infrastructure that makes democratic life possible. Independent reporting gives people evidence they can check, helps them hold institutions to account and makes disagreements about public affairs possible on the basis of facts that can be examined.
Media and information literacy connects that work to the public. People need to know how to evaluate a claim, trace a source and recognise uncertainty. News organisations can help by showing how they reached their conclusions, explaining where AI was used and correcting mistakes openly. Journalism education can teach those practices alongside reporting, verification and editorial judgement.
An international network open to collaborators
The UNESCO UNITWIN Network on Media and Information Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue, known as MILID, is a university cooperation network that grew out of an initiative by UNESCO and the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. Universities that have contributed to its work include the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cairo University, Tsinghua University, Temple University, the University of São Paulo, the University of the West Indies and Moulay Ismail University. Through initiatives such as the MILID Yearbook, the network brings together research and educational practice from different media systems and cultural contexts.
The research team is now being formed. Universities, research groups, journalism educators and media professionals are invited to express interest. They can coordinate a national or regional node, contribute to a specific task such as curriculum mapping, or take part in expert consultations and scenario workshops. Planned outputs include an open international map of journalism education, a comparative report and a competency framework to help universities update their programmes. Download the programme.
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