Generative Artificial Intelligence Adoption Among Bangladeshi Journalists: Exploring Journalists' Awareness, Acceptance, Usage, and Organizational Stance on Generative AI

TL;DR

This study explores how Bangladeshi journalists adopt and perceive Generative AI, highlighting high usage despite limited institutional support and revealing unique social influences affecting adoption in non-Western journalism.

Contribution

It extends the UTAUT model by identifying the non-role of facilitating conditions and the horizontal social influence in GenAI adoption among Bangladeshi journalists.

Findings

High reliance on GenAI despite limited institutional support.

Social influence operates through informal peer pressure.

Facilitating conditions do not significantly impact behavioral intent.

Abstract

Newsrooms and journalists across the world are adopting Generative AI (GenAI). Drawing on in-depth interviews with 23 journalists, this study identifies Bangladeshi journalists' awareness, acceptance, usage patterns, and their media organizations' stance toward GenAI. This study finds Bangladeshi journalists' high reliance on GenAI like their Western colleagues despite limited institutional support and the near absence of AI policy. Despite this contrast, concerns over GenAI's implications in journalism between the West and non-West were mostly identical. Moreover, this study contributes to the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) by proposing two changes regarding GenAI adoption among journalists in non-Western settings. First, this study identifies the non-contribution of facilitating conditions in shaping behavioral intent in GenAI adoption in non-Western contexts. Second, social influence works in a horizontal order through informal peer pressure or professional motivation in the absence of formal institutional hierarchical pressure. Voluntariness in the context of Bangladeshi journalists is underpinned by their professional compulsion. Therefore, this study contributes to understanding how contextual factors shape technology adoption trajectories in non-Western journalism.