“AI matters, but my STEM sucks”: Determinants of Chinese journalism students’ views on greater AI training in journalism courses

As artificial intelligence (AI) makes inroads into all aspects of work, the need for training in the use of AI should be self-evident. Often, however, education institutions lag in incorporating these new skills into the curriculum. Drawing on previous research, this paper develops a bespoke model to investigate how three groups of factors – intrinsic factors such as subjective perceptions, extrinsic factors such as social influence, and personal characteristics such as individual innovativeness – affect Chinese journalism students’ interest in seeing training in the use of AI incorporated in their university courses. In total, seven factors were identified as factors commonly attributed to interest in adoption of new systems and hypotheses were developed and tested in respect of each of these by way of a structural equation model using data collected from questionnaires distributed to journalism students. The key findings indicate that perceived usefulness and perceived ease play crucial positive roles in students’ interest in having AI education incorporated in journalism education, while perceived value, individual innovativeness and social influence also played positive, but less important, roles. Two factors, cost and risk, played a negligible role in influencing students in favor of or against the incorporation of AI training into their curriculum. While the study examined factors impacting on students’ views regarding the incorporation into their studies of one type of technological innovation, AI, the results may provide broader insights into the role of various factors more generally as motivators or inhibitors of student acceptance of training in new technologies in their studies.