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Navigating Earthquake News in the Age of AI

Description: 

Studies suggest that damaging earthquakes lead to abundant news content. Among questions journalists seek to answer are: What happened and what should we expect in the immediate future? Where and when was the earthquake? Who and what is impacted? Are there injuries? Why did this happen? When will it happen again? When is “THE BIG ONE?” Explanations are often crafted by well-meaning journalists with varying levels of knowledge and experience with earthquake science, but who seek to answer these vital questions for the public. Journalists covering an event use well-documented journalistic processes, such as consulting expert sources who are in the position to speak to the event and referencing evidence that both tells the story and validates the information provided by scientists.

However, in today’s age of digital publishing, newsroom resources are scarce and journalistic work is evolving. Media outlets now combine traditional journalistic methods with novel content production tactics. For example, the Los Angeles Times uses Quakebot to pull USGS data on an earthquake’s location, magnitude, and other critical information into an article draft that is reviewed by an editor and can be published within minutes. Other publications are experimenting with generative ai to create realistic, but fabricated, images showing scenes of future earthquake damage. While engaged scientists cooperate with journalists hoping their science will be fairly represented and informative, recent uses of these blended journalistic approaches begs the questions: What are impacts on readers who consume an article based on combinations of well-supported facts, expert sources, conjecture, pseudo science, and ai-generated information? Does the presence of expert sources lend credibility to potentially misleading information also found in an article? Is the reputation of the source unintentionally impacted when quoted in an article containing false or incomplete information? This case study seeks to unpack these questions and form recommendations for how scientists can navigate this increasingly complicated media environment in the age of AI.

Session: Adventures in Social Seismology: Ethical Engagement, Earthquake Early Warnings, Operational Forecasts, and Beyond - I

Type: Oral

Date: 4/15/2025

Presentation Time: 08:30 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Samantha

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: Yes

Poster Number:

Authors