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Center for Digital Dignity

MWAURA, J. (2025) WHO OWNS THE NEWS? THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AI JOURNALISM IN AFRICA

In this forthcoming chapter, Job Mwaura investigates the political economy shaping the integration of generative AI into African newsrooms, focusing on questions of technological ownership, access, and agency. By situating AI journalism within broader power structures, the analysis reveals how global tech monopolies and local infrastructural disparities influence who gets to produce, control, and benefit from AI-generated news. The chapter calls for a critical rethinking of media sovereignty and public trust in an increasingly automated information landscape.

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UDUPA, S.(2026) PROMPT ETHNOGRAPHY: CRITICAL METHODOLOGY FOR GENERATIVE AI

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This chapter develops “prompt ethnography” as a critical methodology to scrutinize generative AI. Prompt ethnography employs reflexive interactions with generative models and public controversies around model behaviors as empirical touchstones to draw inferences about why AI models say what they say about politically charged topics, and interrogate the larger structures of power that define the code, content and consternations undergirding model outputs. It is published in the Handbook of Anthropology and Artificial Intelligence (edited by Udupa S. & Hervik P., Edward Elgar)

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UDUPA, S. & HERVIK P. EDS. (2026) HANDBOOK ON ANTHROPOLOGY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Featuring 33 chapters and the editors’ introduction, this Handbook provides a groundbreaking collection of anthropological research on artificial intelligence (AI), examining how anthropology can help to comprehend and critique its development. Evaluating the limits, hopes and fears of AI, leading experts explore its influence as a sociocultural phenomenon rather than a discrete technological system.