T.J. Thomson

Governments are hiding data, threatening democracy. Here’s how it affects you - 360 From being custodians of public knowledge, governments are turning to architects of manufactured ignorance. Amid disappearing evidence, citizens are struggling to hold power to account    Around the w...

Our new article shows how the trend of data dismantling and artificially creating data scarcity about key public issues is affecting scrutiny and journalism investigations. Great working with Mathias Felipe de Lima Santos, @antmandan.bsky.social @tjthomson.bsky.social 360info.org/governments-...

💬 We convened a roundtable earlier this year focused on exploring challenges and identifying responses across the news media industry and are excited to launch the results of our conversations in this report next week (at 3:30 pm on 4 December).

News Audience Experiences with Local Visual News: A Digital Diary Study Focusing attention on the visual mode in news is essential given the visual nature of online news environments, the necessity of engaging audiences inundated in a flood of content, and the way that...

5️⃣ The perceived relevance or impact of the example for the local community writ large (eg, seeing a natural disaster that affects the entire community)

🔗 The open-access study can be read here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

3️⃣ Some personal connection to the image or video (eg, recognising the person or place shown)
4️⃣ A connection one’s friends, colleagues, or family have or could potentially have to the image or video (eg, seeing your kid's school or sport)

We found audience engagement was impacted by these five factors:

1️⃣ Aspects of the image or video itself (colour, lighting, composition, aesthetics)
2️⃣ Aspects of the presentation context (headline, caption, watermark, size)

🎙️ Here are a couple quotes about audience engagement with #visualnews from a new study, co-authored with Rachael Anderson, and published today in Journalism Practice.

📝💻 We used a digital diary study to explore news visuals that community members thought were interesting, surprising, or remarkable.

ADM+S researcher @tjthomson.bsky.social explores the idea that AI systems don’t ‘see’ the world like humans do, which is shaping how AI generated images look and feel

Read the full @theconversation.com article here: bit.ly/47eXJZy

#AIgenerated #AIimages

Computer-mediated representations: a qualitative examination of algorithmic vision and visual style - TJ Thomson, 2025 To the general public, text-to-image generators, such as Midjourney and DALL-E, seem to work through magic and, indeed, their inner workings are often frustrati...

🔗 The open-access study can be read here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

🙏 Thanks to @nataliialaba.com for inspiring this study and to she and @neous.bsky.social for organising a panel on visual style that we presented at #ADDA5 and that helped sharpen my arguments in this paper.

A pixelated image of a face with computer-generated overlays that label facial features along with confidence scores. Image by Elise Racine / Better Images of AI

👁️🤖 How do humans and computers "see"? That's the question driving my latest research, published in @viscomjournal.bsky.social. This study evaluates how computers process images and which specific #visualstyle elements across 3 dimensions computer vision regards as important and which it does not.

We teach young people to write. In the age of AI, we must teach them how to see Generative AI changes how we see – and how we decide what’s real.

💬 We also published a plain-language summary of the article in @aunz.theconversation.com: theconversation.com/we-teach-you...

What a delight it was to work with @danielpfurtscheller.at, @klobinger.bsky.social, @nataliialaba.com, & @kathchr.bsky.social on this newly published study: Visual literacies in transition: multimodal co-production with generative AI.

🔗 You can read our open access study here: lnkd.in/gZwZr83g

Looking forward to this chat later today. 😃

New article from The Conversation by ADM+S researcher @tjthomson.bsky.social with Samuel Cornell (UNSW). They explore the consequences for young people when consuming violent and disturbing viral content on social media.

#viralvideos #socialmediaharms

🔗 Read more: bit.ly/466Ui7Q

The Routledge Companion to Visual Journalism (ed. N. Dahmen & @tjthomson.bsky.social) was available at the Future of Journalism Conference #FoJ2025 @cujournmedcul.bsky.social

Rethinking journalistic autonomy in the algorithmic era: toward context-aware, value-driven, and human-centred research into journalistic AI Published in Communication Research and Practice (Ahead of Print, 2025)

🚀 New piece w/ @tjthomson.bsky.social T.J. Thomson: we explore how newsrooms can integrate AI and research into journalistic AI can be done in ways that are context-aware, value-driven, and human-centred.
🔗 doi.org/10.1080/2204...

#Journalism #AI #ResponsibleAI #MediaInnovation #aanzca #jeraa #foj

The Routledge Companion to Visual Journalism Representing the first collection of its kind, The Routledge Companion to Visual Journalism introduces fundamental topics and ideas, delineates the diversity and complexity of this growing field, and ...

🗺️🔗 If you’re in the rest of the world, you can pre-order a copy here: www.routledge.com/The-Routledg...

📖 The #RoutledgeCompanionToVisualJournalism is now available for pre-order. It features a whopping 41 chapters over 524 pages and is richly accompanied by all types of visuals from photographs and screenshots to AI-generated images and data visualisations.

🇦🇺🇳🇿🔗: www.booktopia.com.au/the-routledg...

Report launch: Engaged Journalism in the Heartland - Understanding Regional News Audiences Register on Humanitix - Report launch: Engaged Journalism in the Heartland - Understanding Regional News Audiences hosted by News and Media Research Centre . Online. Wednesday 27th August 2025. Find e...

🔗 Register here to attend the launch and receive a copy of the report: events.humanitix.com/engaged-jour...

@skpark.bsky.social

🤔 What do news audiences want from local news?
📰 What do they think is poorly covered or missing?
📝 How involved are news audiences in the production and dissemination of local news?

Our new report addresses these and other pressing questions for those living in regional parts of the country.

T.J. Thomson T.J. Thomson — Profile on The Conversation

🙌 Thanks to all my co-authors and to the editors who make the work shine. I'm also grateful to the team at @admscentre.org.au for helping amplify our work.

🔗 Fancy a read about AI, visual culture, visual communication, or inclusion? Check the articles out here: theconversation.com/profiles/t-j...

I reached a satisfying milestone today: 1 million reads of my 24 career-to-date articles published in @theconversation.com. I genuinely enjoy translating research for public benefit through these pieces and look forward to hopefully continuing to do so for many years into the future.

Novelty, negativity and no politicians: research reveals what makes some images more engaging than others If you’re a sucker for a black and white filter, think again, as new research shows colour images are preferred by most viewers.

🤔 We see hundreds or thousands of images each day – but not all of them stand out to us. Why are some visuals more engaging than others? We explore this question in our latest article in @theconversation.com.

🔗 theconversation.com/novelty-nega...

@admscentre.org.au

👀 New research out on the types of bodies who are making visual news in regional settings, how bodies are being represented in visual news in these areas, and how the embodied nature of visual journalism affects the way that news images are made and presented.

🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Google’s SynthID is the latest tool for catching AI-made content. What is AI ‘watermarking’ and does it work? AI watermarks are supposed to help us tell if content is real or generated. But they dramatically vary in effectiveness.

Google’s new SynthID tool claims to detect AI-generated content—but only if it’s made with Google’s own models. Researchers @tjthomson.bsky.social @jeanburgess.bsky.social @busedoyu.bsky.social
explain how it works & whether watermarking can meet the challenge of #GenAI authenticity bit.ly/43Lj2jB

Join Brisbane Hacks/Hackers - ADM+S Affiliate Dr T.J. Thomson will discuss news audiences’ experiences with AI-generated/-edited content in journalism & the social-ethical-legal issues that they think exist @hackshackers.com @tjthomson.bsky.social @antmandan.bsky.social admscentre.org/HacksHackers

Election meme hits and duds – we’ve graded the some of the best (and worst) of the campaign so far Memes are the currency of the election campaign online. Here’s a report card on the Labor, Liberal and Greens efforts, from the good to the tone-deaf.

Here's me and @tjthomson.bsky.social's latest piece for @theconversation.com, discussing some of the memes put out by the major parties in the Australian election campaign.

theconversation.com/election-mem...

Tools like Apple’s photo Clean Up are yet another nail in the coffin for being able to trust our eyes Editing any photo, anywhere, is cheaper and easier than ever. What does that mean for having ‘visual proof’ of something?

I saw an ad over the weekend for Apple's #cleanup photo editing feature, now accessible through the default photos app on eligible devices, and wrote this in @aunz.theconversation.com about what this means for trust in #visual media.

🔗 theconversation.com/tools-like-a...

@admscentre.org.au

Enjoyed musing about the implications of #IlFoglio's fully #AI-generated newspaper experiment with SBS's Max Gugole and being quoted alongside @monicaattard.bsky.social in the resulting article.

🔗 www.sbs.com.au/language/ita...

@admscentre.org.au

Can you tell the difference between real and fake news photos? Take the quiz to find out As the tide of AI ‘slop’ rises, it’s more important than ever to hone your reality-checking skills.

🤔 How would you fare with trying to sort photos from synthetic #AI images? Here's your opportunity to try it out. I had fun working with Michael Lucy and Matt Garrow on this interactive for @aunz.theconversation.com.

theconversation.com/can-you-tell...

@admscentre.org.au @ntsnetwork.bsky.social

Delighted to be included in this list with co-authors @ryanjthomas.bsky.social and @phoebesophist.bsky.social alongside some very fine colleagues from around the world.