Registration is now open for the online conference ‘Automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western world: Actors, practices, and socio-political impact’ on 5-6 May. In addition to a global line-up of speakers, the conference features a keynote by Professor Payal Arora (Erasmus University Rotterdam). Please visit the conference website for more information about the program: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/automation-in-media/2021/04/15/conference-program/ <https://blogs.helsinki.fi/automation-in-media/2021/04/15/conference-program/> Attendance is free, but registration is required. Please register by 3 May via the registration form available via the conference website. About the conference: Algorithmic systems and other data-driven practices exert increasing influence over today’s societies, reshaping how social and economic systems function. Algorithms are society’s new “power brokers,” dictating the stories that we pay attention to, the activities we participate in, and the people we connect with. The news media is among those industries where artificial intelligence and algorithms are making strides and reordering the playing field as their use diversifies and expands. AI and algorithmic systems are implemented in newsrooms at various stages of the workflow: from smart tools that assist journalists in producing stories to the fully automated production of news articles, and from audience data analysis that informs editorial decisions to algorithmic recommendation systems that match specific content to users. On social media platforms, that form an increasingly central node in news consumption, algorithms not only generate news feeds based on our acquaintances’ actions and advertisers’ preferences but also perform as actors with their own judgment. The algorithmic systems employed by social media platforms, news aggregators and other recommender systems can therefore affect the journalistic process and professional practices of media practitioners. Current scholarly debate on these issues prioritizes and builds upon empirical studies mostly conducted in democratic, Western contexts. Much less is known about the drivers of digital innovation uptake and its socio-political impact in other political and cultural contexts, and this is problematic. Countries such as China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa and South Korea do implement global or introduce their own AI-driven tools in their news media. This challenges the mediated reality they produce and can, in turn, affect global media agendas (e.g., in the international activities of Chinese Xinhua, Russian RT and Arab Al Jazeera). At the same time, the socio-political impact of news and disinformation amplified through social media is evident across the Global South, where moderation efforts by global platforms lag behind. This online conference aims to place the discussion of automation and data-driven journalism beyond the Western and Anglophone world. We build upon previous research demonstrating that media innovation and its adoption develop differently depending on the specific characteristics of media and political systems and markets. Understanding the algorithmic turn in journalism as a socially constructed process – dependent on a country’s journalistic culture, news media’s formal and informal institutions, and the societal role of media – we strive to define an alternative list of questions to be added to the discussion. Organisers: Olga Dovbysh (U Helsinki), Hanna Tuulonen (U Helsinki), Mariëlle Wijermars (Maastricht University and U Helsinki)