Aftonbladet uses AI to analyse its own diversity and representation

By Martin Schori

Deputy Managing Editor

Aftonbladet

Stockholm, Sweden

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Aftonbladet, Scandinavia's largest newspaper, has a nearly 200-year tradition of scrutinising those in power. Recently, however, we turned the spotlight on ourselves.

In collaboration with the Danish company MediaCatch, we used an AI bot to analyse all of our content over the course of a year. The investigation included:

• More than 100,000 articles.
• 157,000 images.
• 9,500 videos.
• 1,300 podcast episodes.
• 8,600 social media posts.

The internal content analysis used an AI bot to review written content, images, and video.

The goal

The purpose of this process was to find out who is seen and heard in Scandinavia's largest newspaper.

Using advanced AI technology, we were able to determine the age, gender, ethnicity, and several other data points about those featured in Aftonbladet. Among other things, we analysed who is seen and heard, the topics different population groups appeared in and discussed, and how this varied across different sections such as politics, culture, lifestyle, and sports.

Why is this important to know?

Aren't news companies supposed to report based on newsworthiness and reflect reality? It is what it is, right?

Yes and no.

Aftonbladet aims to reach the entire Swedish population (and there are about 4 million people who engage with us daily). If we have this ambition, we also need to reflect the whole society - not just parts of it.

It's a matter of trust, but it's also of our business. And, as a major media player, we want to take social responsibility.

So, what were the results?

The study shows, among other things, that men dominate our news coverage, while women are more often associated with "soft" issues.

In our social media posts, such as on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, we see a significantly better representation and balance. We can also see our journalism does quite well in reflecting the population from a diversity perspective.

Next steps

Conducting a study like this without acting on the results would be pointless. We will now delve even deeper into the data to develop concrete suggestions for improvement.

Additionally, several collaborative projects are ongoing with the innovation lab IN/LAB. IN/LAB works to reach "news avoiders" found in several groups, particularly in socially vulnerable areas and among younger people.

Of course, some 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 Sweden, such as wars and conflicts, business, crime, and politics. These are areas traditionally dominated by men. Men start wars and shoot others to a greater extent than women do. Also, a single article covering a Premier League game will include at least 22 men.

But in other cases, it's about challenging old habits and actively working to bring more diverse voices into our journalism.

One thing we've already done is develop a GPT model that finds female experts. It first searches through our own lists of experts, but it also goes out and looks for information online.

Artificial Intelligence has also been used to suggest new experts in order to expand diversity of sources.

So far, it has worked well. Because it's based on generative AI, it can, in many cases, better understand context and find a suitable expert than Google can. Generative AI is usually (and rightfully) accused of reinforcing and perpetuating prejudices and biases, but it can also be used to combat these same issues.

We've also developed a bot that scrapes Aftonbladet's front page and looks specifically at gender balance. It's a useful tool, though it still needs some fine-tuning. (See the screenshot below for a funny example of when it didn't quite get it right.)

The bot has not been entirely successful in identifying gender balance.

There is a perception that the pursuit of diversity and representation in the media can be seen as an expression of some kind of "woke" agenda. But my firm belief is that a more inclusive perspective makes us better. In other words, this is not about fulfilling any external demands for political correctness but about improving the quality and relevance of our journalism.

For us, it's simply a matter of survival.

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About Martin Schori

Martin Schori is deputy managing editor at Aftonbladet in Stockholm, Sweden. Martin can be reached at [email protected] or @schori.

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