Search engines, paywalls, bots, targeted ads: we already share our media worlds with machines — and with the rise of generative AI, new ones are coming.

Automating Media is an accessible, incisive guide to the new wave of automation transforming contemporary culture and communication. Drawing on extensive research, the book sheds new light on the key technologies, infrastructures, industry convulsions and cultural innovations driving media automation. The authors pinpoint where automation is happening, introduce the organisations making it happen, and critically assess debates over its consequences. They outline the implications of automation for knowledge practices, entertainment, and culture, and highlight its potential impact on other spheres.

Filled with instructive contemporary and historical examples, Automating Media shows how current developments see the return of questions and conflicts provoked by earlier moments of technological change, while also presenting new challenges that will unfold over the coming decades. It is enlightening reading for advanced students and scholars of Media and Communication Studies, Internet Studies, and industry practitioners.

Julian Thomas is Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, and a Distinguished Professor at RMIT University.

James Meese is Associate Professor at RMIT University.

Jean Burgess is Distinguished Professor of Digital Media at Queensland University of Technology.