Prescriptive Research Pathways: One Hundred Underexplored Research Questions on AI in the Media Industry

Artificial intelligence is no longer a backstage automation in media; it is an infrastructural actor that shapes what audiences encounter, how meaning circulates, and which truths acquire authority. Responding to a research field that is often technocratic and reductionist, this chapter offers a prescriptive cartography of one hundred critically underexplored research questions on AI across the media value chain. The questions are systematically organized across domains including algorithmic truth and editorial logic, platform governance, generative content production, personalization and behavioral engineering, ethics and justice, journalism, representation, intellectual property, labor and economics, misinformation and security, audience trust, immersive media, strategic management, sustainability, and regulation, culminating in philosophical inquiries about agency, creativity, and authorship. Methodologically, the chapter elevates the question itself as a diagnostic instrument and theoretical heuristic: a means to render opaque systems legible, expose normative vacuums, and orient empirical programs and policy design. Five synthetic findings emerge: probabilistic delivery displaces editorial intentionality; ethical alignment remains indeterminate under attention economies; optimization pressures homogenize culture; governance and law lag transnational platforms and demand auditability; and co-creative AI destabilizes inherited concepts of identity and responsibility. The chapter concludes with a research and governance roadmap grounded in transparency, pluralism, ecological accountability, and democratic oversight.