Artificial Intelligence in Rural and Regional Journalism

Aimee Rinehart is the senior product manager AI Strategy for The Associated Press.

Before joining AP, she was the deputy director of First Draft’s New York bureau, helping journalists and newsrooms to identify, verify and report on misinformation and disinformation through the 2018 and 2020 US election cycles.

In 2018, she managed Comprova, a project to monitor and analyse misinformation and disinformation around the 2018 Brazilian elections.

Aimee started working online in 1996 and was a digital originator at The New York Times, and returned to print briefly as an editor at the Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels.

She served on the steering committee for Partnership on AI’s AI Procurement and Use Guidebook for Newsrooms, and is a council member advising the direction of the newly-formed Consortium on Trust in Media and Technology at the University of Florida.

Aimee is in the 2024 cohort of the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism CUNY as the Tow-Knight Fellow in AI Studies.

Rita Arrigo is strategic engagement manager at the CSIRO National AI Centre, focused on building a Responsible AI Network – RAIN – a world-first cross-ecosystem collaboration aimed at establishing and sharing the best practice of responsible AI in the commercial sector.

Her work includes engaging partners to amplify positive AI adoption and innovation that benefits Australia’s business and community. Previously, deputy director at the Centre of Industrial AI Research and Innovation (CIAIRI) and chief digital advisor at Microsoft, she cultivates innovation with emerging technologies including AI, Machine Learning (ML), Mixed Reality (MR) and Digital Twin to sectors including health, transport, energy, education and urban planning, customer engagement and environmental stewardship.

She was appointed an AI Ambassador and continues to advocate for ways that AI and extended reality can reinvent experiences in work and daily life. She is an accomplished speaker who has gained recognition as an expert in AI, innovation, and digital technology.

Her passion for cutting-edge immersive technology is exemplified by the demos she delivers with her own HoloLens 2, with experience in television, radio, podcasting, and workshops.

Sonja is a RPCV Committee Member and the director of the Digital News Academy at Melbourne Business School.

A former undergraduate and postgraduate journalism lecturer at RMIT University, Sonja was awarded JERAA’s Outstanding Educator in a Journalism Program, the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, the Ed Montano Award for Industry Engagement and several other accolades.

Sonja has an extensive journalism background across the ABC, SBS and commercial newsrooms.

Christina Arampatzi is a key member of the award-winning Digital News Academy team, working with world-class subject matter experts, facilitating live learning sessions, building learner resources, developing learner communications, managing social media and creating video content.

With a background in journalism, she has experience with Al Jazeera and worked as a fact checker with the RMIT ABC Fact Check Unit. In other fields, she worked in operations management with a leading Melbourne entertainment precinct and as copyright expert and data researcher with various organisations.