**4. Scoping review**

The call by Nyam [2] to maximise the impact of AI in such countries, governments, and other stakeholders as well as communication scholars ought to put all resources and expertise towards meeting AI-oriented digital media communication needs of the society is adequate. Given digital divide concerns being accelerated by AI, the need to revisit the Digital Dichotomy Theory (DD-Theory) is important as this paper proposed it to be a better way of understanding the inherent global media communication dynamics. This is so because the basic assumption of the theory is that entities without the same predisposing factors will often significantly vary in

#### *Artificial Intelligence and the Media: Revisiting Digital Dichotomy Theory DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108042*

the adoption time of current experience(s). Thus, AI does aid media communication realities to play out and affect humanity in such disparities.

Nyam [2] observed that the whole gamut of media classifications and applications, as well as operations, seem to be dependent on the available communication technologies. Today, digital media and communication had definitively advanced from basic software to AI. Sociology-Central in Nyam [2] affirms how the development of computers, for example, has increased audiences' spread and in turn made it more difficult to clearly distinguish between 'mass media' and 'non-mass media'. This expression relates to the contemporary influences of the new media upon the old 'traditional media.' The concept of 'new' applies to media technologies that have altered media classifications, with great contempt for communication characteristics of the traditional media.

Additionally, AI has advanced media communication reality. Notwithstanding, the regulatory framework is needed. The issue of the digital divide has indeed placed an extra burden on media scholars as well as professionals, and communication policymakers in developing countries. For instance, Adjei [3] mentions how old media, newspapers, television, and radio had the concept of feeding information based on the ground research for their listeners and viewers' in places such as Ghana, where radio and television stations tailor niche agenda-driven programs of political parties.

Pate [1] observed that where technology has been efficiently harnessed for the social, economic, and cultural wellbeing of groups and nations, a knowledge society emerges. Media technologies have always been a concern. Sometimes they had been viewed from the wide-angle lens of their facilitation of development communication goals, politics and good governance, the institution of democratic culture equality, and social justice. At other times, innovations in media technologies are viewed more narrowly within particular sectors, such as particular forms of messages, scope, and nature of communication enabled. The goals in health communication and marketing communication are likewise how to effect desired social behaviours. The concern in simplest terms is whether societies are never simple. As such, further questions are raised beneficial for which strata in society, under what conditions, and to what ends? These are the concerns evident in this paper regarding Artificial Intelligence.

Most of the African countries are broadly classified as developing. "As rapidly as technology is developing in the rest of the world, in Africa, things have moved at a slower pace," ([4], p. 52). The implication is that the global media imperative may have fundamental influences, but media experiences in developing nations are lagging. In this perspective, the position of the digital dichotomy is clear. The theory offers explanations to the power of media communication landscapes, and experiences between developed (invention driven media communication environment), and developing countries (adoption driven media communication environments). This has resulted in varying rates of AI-based digital updates and a 'global village.' Yes, this may be a global village, but the 'globe' has unequal media communication digits.

It is apparent in the literature that the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in journalism and other communication practices brings up long-standing debates regarding the potentials of technological innovations for good and evil in society. The paper, therefore, beamed the light on contemporary manifestations of global challenges, though understandably, the Nigerian context features prominently. Still, within the context of the literature, findings are shadowed by unprecedented global occurrences; the world has been bedevilled with a range of these in recent times. The paper validates the theoretical postulations that stark the double-edged sword that media technologies can be.

Arguably, since the 20th century, days when McLuhan argued that technologies help extend human capacity; media technologies have been regarded as liberating and empowering. Technologies aided human manipulation of mechanical and electronic processes in the media and communication industries. Similarly, social interactions were enhanced – extending audience reach, expanding scopes of coverage, altering the limitations of time and space, and bridging critical information gaps. With these came the potential to shift the balance of power in societies as desirable in democratic societies.

As observed by Pate [1] by adding the power of computing to mechanical and electronic innovation of the past, as done with Artificial Intelligence, far greater is the potential of media for good or ill in 21st-century society. The networked societies are now better connected. Westernised societies are linked with those in the global south, individuals and media organisations alike are creating content. The resultant gluts of information further intensify the nature of global and social challenges. The preceding arguments have created an important knowledge vacuum in the literature for this paper to be conceived.
