With “Artificial intelligence: Friend or foe?” WACC’s quarterly journal takes a communication rights lens to the digital technology that is re-shaping our world.

Artificial intelligence is here to stay, notes Media Development editor Philip Lee in the 2025/3 issue. Technology continues to advance, and its effects are always extensive and often unpredictable.

“What we must do – and urgently,” he stresses, “is to think ethically, to act transparently, and to communicate the implications of AI development widely and intelligibly.”

Our understanding of the right to privacy must expand from data to the person when it comes to AI, argue researchers Lemi Baruh (University of Queensland, Australia, and Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey) and Mihaela Popescu (California State University, San Bernardino) in their contribution to the issue.

“Instead of focusing narrowly on managing information flows, we propose reframing privacy as essential for protecting and nurturing our capacity for self-formation and autonomous action – a concept we call privacy as a right to becoming.”

Anne Kruger (University of Queensland) and Richard Murray (University of Queensland) examine what is needed for AI governance using Australasia as a case study, while Vamsi Krishna Pothuru looks at collaborative strategies in India to address how AI is intensifying misinformation (University of Hyderabad, India).

Hasani Felix (The University of the West Indies, Jamaica) proposes a multilayered approach to maintaining ethical standards of journalism in the face of the growing use of AI.

Jamaican journalist Ricardo Brooks calls for whole-of-society action in the Caribbean region, using media literacy programs and targeted research to combat misinformation and disinformation.

How can small states in particular respond effectively to Big Tech’s dominance, asks Cordel Green of the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica. He points to a public interest compact as a vehicle for agreements with digital platforms to ensure transparency, safety, inclusion, and support for initiatives at the national level.

When looking at harms caused by AI, we must consider the collective – and we must “talk about power,” says Laine McCrory (Toronto Metropolitan University and York University, Canada). She names feminist research and participatory digital citizenship as ways “of not only examining power but of developing strategies to shift power as well.”

The Issue’s thematic focus concludes with a review by the Association for Progressive Communications of recent global commitments to protect human rights defenders in the digital age, and UNESCO principles for rights-based AI ethics and new recommendations for advancing Indigenous rights in and through the media.

Media Development 2025/03 is available to subscribers and WACC members. Articles in the issue include:

• Temporal selves under siege: Artificial Intelligence and the need for privacy as a right to becoming by Lemi Baruh and Mihaela Popescu
• Australasia’s AI unveiling: pedagogy, practice and policy by Anne Kruger and Richard Murray
• Deepfakes, cloned voices, and digital media literacy: AI’s role in the misinformation crisis in India by Vamsi Krishna Pothuru
• Ethical journalism in the age of AI by Hasani Felix
• Needed: An antidote to misinformation in the Caribbean by Ricardo Brooks
• Power, responsibility, and trust: A framework for communication governance in the digital age by Cordel Green
• Can machines think? What feminism can teach us about ethical AI development beyond de-biasing by Laine McCrory
• A digital milestone: New resolution on human rights defenders and new technologies adopted by the UN Human Rights Council by Francia Baltazar and Paula Martins
• A human rights approach to AI by UNESCO
• Indigenous Peoples and the Media by UNESCO
• On the screen: Ecumenical Juries at Oberhausen (Germany), Cannes (France), and Zlín (Czech Republic)