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Newsbots That Mediate Journalist and Audience Relationships
Digital Journalism
Abstract
News media organisations are experimenting with a new generation of newsbots that move beyond automated headline delivery to the delivery of news according to a conversational format within the context of private messaging services. To build the newsbot, journalists craft statements and answers to users’ questions that mimic a natural conversation between a journalist and user. In so doing, journalists are experimenting with styles of communication that reflect very particular journalistic personas. We investigate the persona of the news chatbot created by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the better to understand how the public broadcaster’s forays into social media service delivery and automation are shaping new relationships between public service broadcasters and their audiences. We find that, for a section of the audience that uses it, the friendly newsbot contrasts favourably with their previous experience with news and the journalists who produce it. The public service journalists who operate the bot are, in turn, using the bot to try to reach new audiences by experimenting with a more informal, intimate relationship with citizen users. The supposedly “intelligent” (but in actual fact very much human-crafted) newsbot is the vehicle through which this new relationship is being forged.
... The conversational agents did not meet these expectations, which led to troubles in the interactions. Researchers [2,15] and actors in the news industry [37] have anticipated that conversational agents will change how we interact with the news. With the societal and civic importance of news and the value of having informal news conversations, there is reason to explore how conversational agents can be used to foster conversational interactions with the news. ...
... Jones and Jones [20] state that BBC employed chatbots in 2019 merely for news distribution, but they anticipated that both text-based and voice-based CUIs are likely to change audience and news broadcasters' relationships in the future. In their research, Ford and Hutchinson [15] found that by employing a chatbot on a personal messaging platform with an informal tone, niche audiences who had not previously engaged with the news participated in news interactions. ...
... For example, in many of the ideas, the CUI seems to have an inner representation of the user and adapts to the signals they receive in interactions [22]. These fndings are consistent with previous research on the advantages and limitations of chatbots for news purposes [15,58] and criteria for successful interactions with CUIs [12,22]. ...
... Hutchinson, 2019). Public relations and advertising practitioners similarly use chatbots or AI influencers as points of contact with the audience(Galloway & Swiatek, 2018;Huh et al., 2023). ...
... Public relations and advertising practitioners similarly use chatbots or AI influencers as points of contact with the audience(Galloway & Swiatek, 2018;Huh et al., 2023). Across all three industries, artificial intelligence serves as a type of brand representative, mediating the relationship between the organization and its audience(Ford & Hutchinson, 2019;Liu & Yao, 2023;Oh & Ki, 2024). Beyond brand reputation, however, there are larger questions about the implications of disrupting relationships that once existed almost exclusively among humans, such as practitioner-practitioner, practitioner-client, practitioner-audience. ...
How should scholars make sense of the rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence in media work? In this commentary, we argue that researchers can begin by stepping outside of their intellectual silos to see how the challenges and opportunities posed by generative AI are commonly shared across the media industries. We focus on three primary mass communication domains—advertising, journalism, and public relations—to illustrate how media professionals across these fields are adopting similar AI technologies (e.g., machine learning, natural language processing, and recommender systems) for often similar purposes (e.g., content creation, audience engagement, and business operations). Even more, the uptake of AI has profound consequences—for ethical norms as well as roles and relationships of humans and machines—that may be best understood across media industries more so than within them in isolation. Ultimately, a more cross-industry approach to scholarship could develop a more encompassing picture about AI's impact on media work and media consumption.
... Overall, a variety of literature exists in the realm of chatbot usage, specifically for journalistic purposes. Researchers over the years have covered a wide spectrum of chatbot applications in the field and have tackled issues like their usage in automated news dissemination [11,22,35], information gathering [34], user newsfeed personalization [23], as well as the use of conversational agents to establish a multi-media approach in the news [33,36], or as a means of studying the relationship between the journalist and the audience [37] as well as the cross-cultural social context those bots are being employed in [38]. Despite that, however, the majority of this research-with only a few notable exceptions-seems to focus more on the potential practical uses of these programs and less on a valid framework with which chatbot creation tools can be evaluated. ...
... Different parties have attempted Overall, a variety of literature exists in the realm of chatbot usage, specifically for journalistic purposes. Researchers over the years have covered a wide spectrum of chatbot applications in the field and have tackled issues like their usage in automated news dissemination [11,22,35], information gathering [34], user newsfeed personalization [23], as well as the use of conversational agents to establish a multi-media approach in the news [33,36], or as a means of studying the relationship between the journalist and the audience [37] as well as the cross-cultural social context those bots are being employed in [38]. Despite that, however, the majority of this research-with only a few notable exceptions-seems to focus more on the potential practical uses of these programs and less on a valid framework with which chatbot creation tools can be evaluated. ...
Interactivity has been a very sought-after feature in professional journalism ever since the media industry transitioned from print into the online space. Within this context, chatbots started to infiltrate the media sphere and provide news organizations with new and innovative ways to create and share their content, with an even larger emphasis on back-and-forth communication and news reporting personalization. The present research highlights two important factors that can determine the efficient integration of chatbots in professional journalism: the feasibility of chatbot programming by journalists without a background in computer science using coding-free platforms and the usability of the created chatbot agents for news reporting to the audience. This paper aims to review some of the most popular, coding-free chatbot creation platforms that are available to journalists today. To that end, a three-phase evaluation framework is introduced. First off, the interactivity features that they offer to media industry workers are evaluated using an appropriate metrics framework. Secondly, a two- part workshop is conducted where journalists use the aforementioned platforms to create their own chatbot news reporting agents with minimum training, and lastly, the created chatbots are evaluated by a larger audience concerning the usability and overall user experience.
... This label encompasses different trends that shape the "journalism that will tell the future" (López- Hidalgo, 2016, p. 255): use of drones to cover news (Fischer, 2019); automated, robot or algorithmic journalism (Caswell & Dörr, 2018); use of conversational botschatbots -in news websites (Ford & Hutchinson, 2019;Jones & Jones, 2019); virtual reality and 360-degree video Journalism (Mabrook & Singer, 2019), also referred to as immersive journalism (De la Peña et al., 2010); and, among others, augmented or mixed reality for news (Aitamurto et al., 2020). ...
... Dolayısıyla, algoritma güdümlü platformlar haberin niteliğini tanımlamada izleyici tercihlerinin önemini arttırmaktadır (Ahmad et al., 2023). Ayrıca, haber botları aracılığıyla kullanıcılarla etkileşimin ve daha yakın ilişki kurmanın haber içeriğini ticarileştirmesinin aksine haber servisini farklı kılacağını kabul eden uygulayıcılar bulunmaktadır (Ford & Hutchinson, 2019). Algoritmalar haber "tüketicilerinin" yine algoritmaların ürettiği sınırsız sayıda haber arasında kaybolmasını önleyebilir. ...
Yapay zeka teknolojilerinin haber üretim sürecinin her aşamasında giderek artan rolü teknolojinin gazetecilik pratiklerini ve mesleki bir kimlik olarak gazeteciliği nasıl değiştirdiğine ilişkin tartışmayı genişletmiştir. Gazeteciler haber üzerindeki mesleki yargı yetkisini ve insan failliğini haber üretiminin her aşamasında karar verici hale gelen yapay zeka algoritmalarına kısmen devretmektedir. Bu çalışma gazetecinin mesleki profesyonelliğinin temelindeki bilginin sahibi olma ve onu yapılandırma üzerindeki otoritesindeki kaymanın gazeteciliğin temel ilkelerini aşındırıcı etkilerini ele almakta ve gazetecilik üzerinde bir mücadele olduğunu varsaymaktadır. Gazeteciliğin sınırlarını koruma ya da şekillendirme mücadelesi, gazeteciliğin kamu yararına faaliyet olma, doğruluk ve editoryal bağımsızlık ilkeleri üzerinde verilmektedir. Mesleki profesyonellik ve otorite iddiaları gazeteciler ve geniş halk kitleleri tarafından paylaşılan bir dizi değere bağlıdır. Bu değerler üzerinde verilen mücadelenin kaybı gazetecilerin haber üzerindeki otoritesini daha fazla kaybetmesine ve gazeteci önceliklerinin yerini ticari kaygıların daha fazla almasına neden olmaktadır. Türkiye’de yapay zekanın gazetecilikteki kullanımı üzerine literatür hızla genişlerken yapay zeka algoritmalarının gazetecilerin mesleki kimliği üzerindeki etkisini ele alan çalışmalar oldukça sınırlıdır. Bu çalışma yapay zekanın gazeteci kimliğini ve gazeteciliği nasıl değiştirdiği üzerine biriken uluslararası literatürü yapay zeka teknolojilerinin haber üretimine entegrasyonunda gazeteciliğin temel normatif iddialarına etkilerine odaklanarak derlemekte ve bu iddiaları korumaya yönelik olanakları somut öneriler sunarak tartışmaya açmaktadır. Böylelikle bu konuda yapılacak ampirik çalışmalar için teorik bir çerçeve sunmaya çalışmaktadır.
... Their impacts may be observed from the initial stages of news production (e. g., story selection) to the latter stages of news consumption (e. g., commenting on stories)" (Zamith, 2019). In fact, AI-driven tools are being implemented in many different areas ranging from news gathering (Thurman et al., 2016) to news production (e. g., Carlson, 2015;Diakopoulos, 2019), and from news distribution (Ford and Hutchinson, 2019) to news personalization . AI-driven technology, as diverse as its use-cases are, changes the nature, role, and workflows of journalism (Schapals and Porlezza, 2020;Lewis et al., 2019), and contributes to "mak[ing] journalism in new ways, by creating new genres, practices, and understandings of what news and news work is, and what they ought to be" (Bucher, 2018, p. 132). ...
Artificial intelligence and automation have become pervasive in news media, influencing journalism from news gathering to news distribution. As algorithms are increasingly determining editorial decisions, specific concerns have been raised with regard to the responsible and accountable use of AI-driven tools by news media, encompassing new regulatory and ethical questions. This contribution aims to analyze whether and to what extent the use of AI technology in news media and journalism is currently regulated and debated within the European Union and the Council of Europe. Through a document analysis of official policy documents, combined with a data mining approach and an inductive thematic analysis, the study looks at how news media are dealt with, in particular regarding their responsibilities towards their users and society. The findings show that regulatory frameworks about AI rarely include media, but if they do, they associate them with issues such as disinformation, data, and AI literacy, as well as diversity, plurality, and social responsibility.
... El uso de la automatización ha creado nuevos debates sobre la elaboración de textos periodísticos y su autoría (Montal & Reich, 2017), y en algunas situaciones ya no es posible distinguir quién ha producido las noticias (Wölker & Powell, 2021). Pero también modifica la relación con la audiencia, por ejemplo, con el uso de Newbots como mediador entre periodista y audiencia (Ford & Hutchinson, 2019). Desde el inicio del periodismo digital la audiencia ha formado parte del trabajo del periodista (García-Orosa, 2018) pero, en el momento actual, con el uso de algoritmos se avanza un peldaño que dibuja dos aristas. ...
La influencia de los algoritmos en la sociedad es cada vez mayor a través de una presencia creciente en todos los ámbitos de la vida diaria, sin que seamos conscientes de ello y, en ocasiones, usurpando la identidad de otros actores sociales. El artículo tiene como propósito principal abordar la metainvestigación sobre el campo de la inteligencia artificial y la comunicación, desde una perspectiva holística que permita analizar el estado de la investigación académica, así como los posibles efectos en estas dos áreas y en la convivencia en un sistema democrático. Para ello se lleva a cabo una revisión sistematizada de la literatura reciente desde enfoques cuantitativos y cualitativos. La temática analizada es cambiante y novedosa; incluye el impacto y la interacción de algoritmos, bots, procesos automatizados y mecanismos de inteligencia artificial en el periodismo y la comunicación, así como su efecto en la democracia. Los resultados dibujan una producción científica en expansión, mayoritariamente en inglés, basada en la discusión teórica o centrada en la percepción de los profesionales de la comunicación. El objeto de estudio mayoritario se sitúa en el periodismo y en la democracia, con menor implicación de la ética o la educación. Los estudios señalan un gran interés sobre los efectos del uso de algoritmos sobre el periodismo y la democracia, pero las respuestas son todavía inciertas y los retos para los próximos años importantes.
... The integration of semi-automated bots in social media spaces has been credited with manipulating elections and creating opinions en masse for users . While media automation sits alongside the human intervention of content creation and manipulation, there remains a significant role for humans to intermediate conversations based on the design and implementation of these bots (Ford & Hutchinson, 2021). Bots, broadly defined, are the penultimate example of the integration of human with non-human actors that define how media is visible; and thereby also invisible, across the social media spaces we inhabit every day. ...
YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, and so on, have their own logics, dynamics and different audiences. This book analyses how the users of these social networks, especially those of YouTube and Instagram, become content prescribers, opinion leaders and, by extension, people of influence.
What influence capacity do they have? Why are intimate or personal aspects shared with unknown people? Who are the big beneficiaries? How much is vanity and how much altruism? What business is behind these social networks? What dangers do they contain? What volume of business can we estimate they generate? How are they transforming cultural industries? What legislation is applied? How does the legislation affect these communications when they are sponsored? Is the privacy of users violated with the data obtained? Who is the owner of the content? Are they to blame for “fake news”? In this changing, challenging and intriguing environment, The Dynamics of Influencer Marketing discusses all of these questions and more.
Considering this complexity from different perspectives: technological, economic, sociological, psychological and legal, the book combines the visions of several experts from the academic world and provides a structured framework with a wide approach to understand the new era of influencing, including the dark sides of it. It will be of direct interest to marketing scholars and researchers while also relevant to many other areas affected by the phenomenon of social media influence.
... In fact, in the argumentation against the allegations of market distortion and negative market impact, both PSM organizations and scholars are reinforcing the role these public interventions can have in the advancing of media markets. As media innovation is "continuous and requires continual investment, expertise and resources" (Rodríguez-Castro, Noonan & Ramsey, 2021, p. 183), PSM are considered well-suited actors to promote it (Ford & Hutchinson, 2019). By assuming more risks in their decision-making than commercial media (Rodríguez-Castro et al., 2021) -as PSM organizations don't necessarily look for a return of investment in traditional economic terms, but in social ones-PSM can experiment with advances in organizational structures, processes, formats, products, and technologies (Mazzucatto, Conway, Mazzoli, Knoll & Albala, 2020). ...
The Internet and the development of new digital technologies have widely influenced both the growth and business strategies of the media environment during the last two decades, in terms of news production, consumption, and presence. The increasing power of digital platforms has disrupted the business models of legacy media in a time of severe economic crisis. The need to embrace digital transitions and to engage with digital intermediaries represents a big challenge for the media industry. However, technology and digital environments can be perceived as allies as well when developing innovative and sustainable business models. In this chapter, we explore the way automation can be integrated within Public Service Media organisations to contribute to saving costs and to provide more knowledge for their strategic decision-making. We develop two case studies on how PSM are experimenting with automation and Artificial Intelligence: the BBC, one of the biggest PSM organisations in the world, and the BR, a regional public service broadcaster in Germany. We conclude that journalism’s cruise control still needs a human driver to be able to balance the benefits of innovation with professional values and ethics.
... The integration of semi-automated bots in social media spaces has been credited with manipulating elections and creating opinions en masse for users . While media automation sits alongside the human intervention of content creation and manipulation, there remains a significant role for humans to intermediate conversations based on the design and implementation of these bots (Ford & Hutchinson, 2021). Bots, broadly defined, are the penultimate example of the integration of human with non-human actors that define how media is visible; and thereby also invisible, across the social media spaces we inhabit every day. ...
... The integration of semi-automated bots in social media spaces has been credited with manipulating elections and creating opinions en masse for users . While media automation sits alongside the human intervention of content creation and manipulation, there remains a significant role for humans to intermediate conversations based on the design and implementation of these bots (Ford & Hutchinson, 2021). Bots, broadly defined, are the penultimate example of the integration of human with non-human actors that define how media is visible; and thereby also invisible, across the social media spaces we inhabit every day. ...
... The integration of semi-automated bots in social media spaces has been credited with manipulating elections and creating opinions en masse for users (Assenmacher, et al., 2020). While media automation sits alongside the human intervention of content creation and manipulation, there remains a significant role for humans to intermediate conversations based on the design and implementation of these bots (Ford & Hutchinson, 2021). Bots, broadly defined, are the penultimate example of the integration of human with non-human actors that define how media is visible; and thereby also invisible, across the social media spaces we inhabit every day. ...
... The growth of bots has been regarded as impacting on news production and distribution towards the personalization of news content [39], as well as on the communication patterns between news organizations' representatives and their publics (e.g. [24,29]), representing a possible avenue for the development of sustainable news business strategies [35]. ...
Digital journalism has experienced disparate and immeasurable transformations over the last decade. The impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) and high technologies was such that led to a whole reconfiguration of the processes of news content production, distribution and consumption. A shift which has been named hi-tech journalism. Media and audience have witnessed a paradigm change in which journalism becomes automated (robot or algorithmic journalism), personalized (virtual assistants, smart speakers, chatbots) and more immersive (immersive journalism). Even it takes visual journalism into the sky (drone journalism). Through this chapter it will be explored and explained the potential opportunities of the latest technologies in journalism practices, but also the threats, risks and challenges posed by these new devices and software.KeywordsHi-tech journalismAutomated journalismImmersive journalismDrone journalism
The current study aimed at exploring the vision of a non-random sample of mass communication students in Egyptian and the Emirates universities for the expected effects of artificial intelligence applications in the media field, and their awareness of their professional future. That is in the light of the emergence of many indicators of dispensing with the human element and dependence on the machine in multiple fields in television production, digital media, public relations, and dealing with big data. The results- based on the technology acceptance model- showed that there is a strong positive correlation with a statistic significant between the easy use of artificial intelligence applications and their expected benefit on job performance. The results have also highlighted statistically significant differences between mass communication students and the expected ease of artificial intelligence applications’ usage according to the following variables: interest level of following up on artificial intelligence applications, level of concern of artificial intelligence effects. Mass communication students perceived the negative effects associated with relying on artificial intelligence applications in the field of media from their point of view " a threat to human jobs" with mean (M) of 2.75, followed by "weak interaction and human emotions" with mean 2.73, then "scarce creative ideas and reliance on coverage stereotype templates" with mean 2.61. Lastly comes “inefficiency to cover various issues and events" with mean (M) of 2.60.
Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have revolutionized journalism in the digital era. This study is constructed on a general literature review revealing the role of AI in journalism and emphasizes the following key facets: (i) automated reporting, (ii) automated content creation, (iii) automated transcription and translation, (iv) data mining and analysis, (v) fact-checking and verification, and (vi) content personalization. The role of AI is observed in creating news reports like financial digests, sports outcomes, and weather updates, gearing up the automated content creation, transcribing the interviews, providing multilingual support for content translation, data mining and analysis, detecting fake news, personalizing the content in line with audience's preferences. The wide application of AI in journalism automates routine journalistic tasks, thereby improving efficacy and productivity and saving time and effort. Though AI is transforming journalism, there are several challenges facing journalism using AI, including biased algorithms, data availability and quality, data privacy and security, the need for training and education, transparency, and cost concerns. Journalists must be trained to identify and address issues such as data privacy, algorithmic bias, and the ethical implications of adopting AI in news reporting. News agencies should also implement strong data protection measures and transparent AI algorithms to overcome these challenges. They must attain a balance between considering user privacy and offering personalized content. It is paramount to have robust regulatory frameworks to oversee the utility of AI in journalism. Also, warranting ethical standards in AI implementation is crucial to preserving journalistic integrity.
This chapter delves into the analysis of how European public broadcasters are responding and adapting to the changes and dynamics of contemporary media. In the face of intense competition imposed by streaming platforms, these media are reformulating and revitalizing their promotional strategies to capture and retain the attention of new audiences, with a particular focus on young people. The text delves into the relationship between the public value of these media and their connection with the younger segments of the audience, highlighting the most characteristic and relevant elements of this demographic group. Throughout the chapter, practical examples are presented that illustrate the various promotional tactics employed, showing different ways of integrating innovations into their promotional processes. These tactics range from the adaptation of formats and communicative elements to the strategic use of social networks. Special emphasis is placed on how European public broadcasters, such as Yle in Finland, FranceTV in France, ARD funk in Germany, RTVE Playz in Spain, RTP Arena in Portugal and RAI in Italy, are implementing these strategies to stay relevant and effective in a constantly evolving media landscape.
Los sectores más jóvenes, además de nativos digitales, conviven con los algoritmos de la IA desde hace años, por lo que resultan una población muy relevante a la hora de conocer su visión sobre esta tecnología disruptiva, incluso en su aplicación al ámbito laboral. En este sentido, los objetivos del trabajo se centran en conocer las percepciones de los estudiantes del área de comunicación sobre el impacto general de la IA, sobre todo la generativa, en este sector profesional y explorar su opinión sobre la relación e integración de estos sistemas algorítmicos y los comunicadores. Se recurre a una doble metodología cuantitativa y cualitativa mediante la aplicación de una encuesta exploratoria inicial y una entrevista estructurada a 59 estudiantes de comunicación. Estos futuros profesionales no consideran que la labor humana pueda ser reemplazada por la IA en las funciones de los comunicadores. Opinan que será una inestimable ayuda para su trabajo de documentación y en términos de ahorro de tiempo, aunque repercutirá en la propagación de la desinformación y en la pérdida de puestos de trabajo. Finalmente, demandan una mayor formación en materia de IA para adaptarse a los desafíos que esta tecnología impone.
Immersive journalism is an innovative storytelling approach that aims to enable the audience to experience the event or situation in the news using virtual reality, unlike traditional news narration. In this study, the literature related to the subject was searched using the keywords Immersive Journalism, 360-Degree Video, Narrative journalism, Newsgame, VR Storytelling through the Web of Science database and a data set was created from 955 publications between 1999 and 2023. No filter was applied to the studies in the data set of the study and articles, books, and early access publications as well as book chapters, editorial materials or conference proceedings in the Web of Science database were included in the study. Bibliometric analysis techniques were applied to the obtained data set and the collaboration status and citation maps of authors and institutions were revealed together with various parameters including authors, institutions, keywords used, number of citations and distribution of publications according to countries.
As a result of the analyses, while the number of studies related to the subject has increased since 2017, the highest number of studies was conducted in 2021. The most articles on the subject of the study are in the “Communication” category. While the majority of academic studies on the subject were carried out in the United States, studies originating from this country were cited the most. While “Virtual Reality” is the most commonly used word in the studies on the subject, “IEEE Access” stands out as the journal with the most publications on the subject. On the other hand, the study revealed important authors, studies and themes in the literature on immersive journalism, emphasised the interactions between authors and disciplines, and provided a road map for future research. The study has limitations in terms of the publication languages of some of the studies in the dataset, the time period of the dataset and the singularity of the preferred database.
This article examines the advancement of automated fact-checking in Brazil and investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) products shape publishers’ discourses and practices. First, it maps the field to identify how it has evolved throughout the years. Next, it draws on 30 official statements published by journalists and their tech partners, and seven semi-structured interviews with representatives from five websites. This article shows an emerging automation landscape in the Brazilian fact-checking venture supported by the tech industry. Nonetheless, AI has challenged fact-checkers’ authority and increased the technologists’ influence over journalism.
In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework composed of a number of e-government, implementation and evaluation-oriented variables, with which we jointly analyze chatbots presented in the research literature and chatbots deployed as public services in Spain at national, regional and local levels. As a result of our holistic analysis, we identify and discuss current trends and challenges in the development and evaluation of chatbots in the public administration sector, such as focusing the use of the conversational agents on the search for government information, documents and services-leaving citizen consultation and collaboration aside-, and conducting preliminary evaluations of prototypes in limited studies, lacking experiments on deployed systems, with metrics beyond effectiveness and usability-e.g., metrics related to the generation of public values. Addressing some of the identified challenges, we build and evaluate two novel chatbots that present advances in the access to open government data and citizen participation content. Moreover, we come up with additional, potential research lines that may be considered in the future for a new generation of e-government chatbots.
Background
This article provides a comprehensive picture of the current state of automated news—understood here as the auto-generation of journalistic text through software and algorithms—as well as to where it is headed. For this, I look at 18 news organisations in Europe, North America and Australia, following a strategic sample inspired by Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) media system typology.
Methods
To conduct this cross-national exploratory study, I made use of semi-structured interviews with editorial staff, executives and technologists. I also rely on Actor-network theory (ANT) to tell when an interference is made to an otherwise linear situation, thus endowing automated news with a sense of agency.
Results
Overall, my findings show that the main interferences concern alternate data sources (e.g., news organisations’ internal feeds, crowdsourced material), in-house interfaces that allow for more journalistic participation (e.g., internal self-editing tools, notification streams) and output other than text (e.g., automated audio summaries for voice assistants).
Conclusions
Although these changes lead to greater journalistic professionalisation, they could also make news organisations become too dependent on Big Tech companies for data acquisition and dissemination of automated news products. That said, mutual negotiations and a re-alignment of interests may occur as platforms increasingly face journalistic challenges.
zet Yapay zekâ teknolojileri gazeteciliği ve haber üretim sürecini giderek daha fazla dönüştürmektedir. Bu çalışma yapay zekâyı ve yapay zekâ teknolojilerini tanımlamayı ve gazetecilik alanındaki kullanımlarını somutlaştırmayı amaçlamaktadır. Yapay zekânın gazetecilik alanındaki kullanımları teknolojinin hızı ile paralel olarak çeşitlenmekte ve yapay zekâ teknolojileri haber üretim sürecinin her aşamasına giderek daha yoğun biçimde entegre edilmektedir. Teknolojinin çeşitlenmesi, alanda kavramsal bir çeşitlenmeye de neden olmaktadır. Ancak yapay zekânın ne olduğuna, hangi teknolojilerin yapay zekâ içerisinde sayılabileceğine, haber otomasyon sistemlerinin yapay zekâ içerisinde olup olmadığına ilişkin temel bazı ayrımlar ve kavramlar gazetecilik alanı açısından netleşmiş değildir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, gazetecilik açısından yapay zekâyı tanımlamak ve yapay zekâ teknolojilerinin gazetecilikteki kullanımlarını hem araştırmacılar hem de bizzat gazeteciler için somutlaştırmaktır. Çalışmanın ilk bölümünde yapay zekâ tanımlanmakta, gazetecilik mesleği sınırları içerisinde bu terimin anlamı ve gazetecilikle ilişkili kavramlar açıklanmaktadır. Çalışmanın ikinci bölümünde ise yapay zekâ teknolojilerinin haber üretim sürecinde somut olarak kullanıldığı alanlar, uygulama, program ve pratikler tanımlanmaktadır.
Background: This article provides a comprehensive picture of the current state of automated news—understood here as the auto-generation of journalistic text through software and algorithms—as well as to where it is headed. For this, I look at 18 news organisations in Europe, North America and Australia, following a strategic sample inspired by Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) media system typology.
Methods: To conduct this cross-national exploratory study, I made use of semi-structured interviews with editorial staff, executives and technologists. I also rely on Actor-network theory (ANT) to tell when an interference is made to an otherwise linear situation, thus endowing automated news with a sense of agency.
Results: Overall, my findings show that the main interferences concern alternate data sources (e.g., news organisations’ internal feeds, crowdsourced material), in-house interfaces that allow for more journalistic participation (e.g., internal self-editing tools, notification streams) and output other than text (e.g., automated audio summaries for voice assistants).
Conclusions : Although these changes lead to greater journalistic professionalisation, they could also make news organisations become too dependent on Big Tech companies for data acquisition and dissemination of automated news products. That said, mutual negotiations and a re-alignment of interests may occur as platforms increasingly face journalistic challenges.
Data permeates nearly all spheres of society, and journalism is no exception to this since data has become a cornerstone of reality construction and perception. This contribution sets out to historicize the datafication processes in digital journalism and the way in which European institutions of media (self-)regulation have dealt with ethical issues regarding the use of data in algorithmic journalism in three areas: accountability, transparency, and privacy. The article shows that the process of datafication in journalism cannot be observed and analyzed in isolation, given that there is a double reflexivity between data-driven societal transformation processes and what happens in journalism. However, almost all press councils in Europe have so far ignored data-driven phenomena like algorithms or news automation. As a consequence, if self-regulators do not regulate, other institutions will, with the risk of news organizations being forced to make decisions on the grounds of regulatory frameworks that are not primarily intended for journalism.
Background: This article provides a comprehensive picture of automated news’ usage—understood here as the auto-generation of journalistic text through software and algorithms, with no human intervention in-between except for the initial programming at 18 news organisations in Europe, North America and Australia, following a strategic sample inspired by Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) media system typology.
Methods: To describe the many ways it is implemented, I rely on Actor-network theory (ANT) so as to distinguish situations where something more is added to automated news systems from those where initial intent is kept and where the software does what it is supposed to do. Semi-structured interviews with editorial staff, executives and technologists were conducted remotely and elements of a netnography were also carried out.
Results: Overall, my findings show that the main transformations—or translations —of automated news systems deal with alternate data sources (e.g., news organisations’ internal feeds, crowdsourced material), new affordances that are specifically built for journalists (e.g., in-house self-editing tools, notification streams) and output other than text (e.g., automated audio summaries for voice assistants).
Conclusions : Although these changes lead to greater journalistic professionalisation, they could also make news organisations become too dependent on Big Tech companies for data acquisition and dissemination of automated news products, thus making platforms gain the upper hand in future developments of these systems.
This study investigates the role of two intermediaries, a mainstream media outlet and a popular digital media platform, to shape cultural identity through a case study of the 2019-2020 Australian bushfire crisis (colloquially known as the ‘Black Summer’). Theoretically framed by networked publics, this study explores the vernacular creativity of social media users and mainstream media coverage during the Black Summer bushfire crisis. Findings draw on a thematic analysis of 100 news articles published between September 2019 and January 2020 by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) randomly selected from a larger corpus of bushfire coverage ( n = 1269) and 120 TikTok videos posted between November 2019 and January 2021 that included prominent hashtags associated with the bushfires. Findings from news coverage highlight the ways in which the ABC framed the role of social media to connect with wider audiences while preserving their values as a public service media outlet. Findings from TikTok videos illustrate the role of ‘templates’ that encourage user participation and vernacular creativity on the platform. Comparing coverage of the bushfires on the ABC and TikTok revealed a shared set of striking visual elements used to shape cultural identity, communicate information, and make sense of a significant public crisis. This article offers directions for future research to explore the relationships and tensions between digital content creators and journalists and their capacity to create and contest cultural identities and imaginaries.
For online news organizations trying to improve audience engagement strategies, Facebook Groups and Messenger chats constitute promising avenues. We explore whether these meso news-spaces, with different discourse architectures and group sizes, affect the substance of the discussion and people’s impressions. In this study, we experimentally tested how training and intimate forms of news engagement in small-group discussions on Facebook Messenger compare with larger conversations in a Facebook Group. The study draws from a real-world experiment in collaboration with Vox Media and its popular Facebook Group for the political podcast The Weeds. Results show that participants perceive the Messenger group as more civil and respectful and report being less prone to self-censor in the Messenger group. Comments in the Messenger group, however, are less relevant to The Weeds podcast and participation in the Messenger group leads people to have less favorable views of the large Facebook Group. The ways in which discourse architecture and group size affect digital discussions provide theoretical and practical insights.
Consumer research on conversational agents (CAs) has been growing. To illustrate and map out research in this field, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of published work indexed in the Clarivate Web of Science and Elsevier Scopus databases. Four dominant topical areas were identified through bibliographic coupling. They are 1) consumers’ trust in CAs; 2) Natural Language Processing (NLP) in developing and designing CAs; 3) communication with CAs; 4) impact of CAs on value creation and the value of CAs for business. We leverage these findings to provide an updated synopsis of extant scientific work. Moreover, we draw a framework whereby we identify the: 1) drivers of and motivators for adoption and engagement with CAs; and 2) the outcomes of CA adoption for both users and organizations. Finally, we leverage the framework to develop an agenda for future research.
This article investigates the role of automated fact-checking on journalistic authority. Using metajournalistic discourse analysis, this article analyzes 137 articles from January 2015 to December 2022 about automated fact-checking to attempt to understand its role in the evolution of the profession’s boundaries. The data reveals three core themes: shifts of labor and experiences, social and civic responsibilities, and attribution and accuracy as contested issues. Each theme offers a different perspective on journalism’s dialogue of itself. Labor shifts illuminate making the work environment easier. Social and civic responsibilities represent the contention between fact and fiction. And attribution and accuracy highlight the need for human actors in the fact-checking process. The journalists welcome the AFCs for their assistance in labor and combatting misinformation. But the journalists draw a line in the sand to protect their autonomy and authority regarding the evolution of technology in ways like natural language processing and algorithmic accountability.
A key application area for voice user interfaces (VUIs) is news consumption, and there is a need to explore how such interactions are performed in practice. This paper presents a study exploring how novice users navigate the news through VUIs and what interactions point to users’ expectations beyond the VUIs’ current capabilities. A field trial with seven participants in five households and follow-up in-depth interviews with six of the participants were conducted. The analysis provides a detailed picture of how such interactions are practically accomplished and offers insights into the participants’ perspectives on their experiences. The participants had some expectations when interacting with the news through VUIs, but many of these were not met. This paper identifies three key challenges: 1) lack of interactional guidance in news contexts, 2) limited navigation capabilities in news sources, and 3) insufficient support for in-depth exploration of the news, with accompanying design implications for more engaging interactions with VUIs for news purposes.
Organizations are increasingly implementing chatbots to address customers’ inquiries, but customers still have unsatisfactory encounters with them. In order to successfully deploy customer service chatbots, it is important for organizations and designers to understand how to introduce them to customers. Arguably, how a chatbot introduces itself as well as its services might influence customers’ perceptions about the chatbot. Therefore, a framework was developed to annotate the social cues in chatbot introductions. In order to validate our framework, we conducted a content analysis of introductions of customer service chatbots (n = 88). The results showed that the framework turned out to be a reliable identification instrument. Moreover, the most prevalent social cue in chatbot introductions was a humanlike avatar, whereas communication cues, indicating the chatbot’s functionalities, hardly occurred. The paper ends with implications for the design of chatbot introductions and possibilities for future research.
As an emerging audience engagement channel for news organizations, news chatbots can interact with and attract audiences in a conversational manner. The present study applies the comparative digital journalism frameworks and examines how society-level factors—such as media systems and information communication technology’s development—explain chatbot implementation on social media platforms. We surveyed 365 news organizations across 38 countries or regions and inspected their Facebook Messenger accounts with a mixed-methods approach. We found that less than half of the surveyed news organizations implemented Messenger, and only 67 Messengers were responsive—i.e. able to produce at least one response. We used the walkthrough method to interact with the Messengers with 22 pre-defined search queries on information seeking and navigation related to COVID-19. Then we used qualitative content analysis to examine the contents generated by the Messengers. Some Messengers are out of service or could only provide limited services (e.g. generating templated responses or closed-ended options). The Messengers in different news organizations demonstrated great variations in their capacity to understand the queries and interact with the audiences and reparative strategies to handle search failure. We proposed a three-category typology of news chatbots and offered practical and constructive suggestions for news organizations.
Algorithms, humans, and interactions: How do algorithms interact with people? Designing meaningful ai experiences.
To ensure that media policy best responds to the innovations like chatbots, it is essential to understand how newsrooms approach algorithmic news processes. This chapter explores how algorithmic processes impact editorial strategy by examining the production of news for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Facebook Messenger NewsBot. Chatbots curate news, potentially disrupting traditional distribution networks and altering journalistic roles. However, journalists at the ABC used algorithms and automated processes to complement their primary editorial tasks, rather than replace them. The algorithms that underpinned the operation of the NewsBot relied on private user data. This chapter concludes that future policy developments need to address the lack of laws and guidelines surrounding the collection, storage and use of readers’ personal data within journalistic chatbots.
The integration of digital technology into media production is at the heart of the media transformation. These changes have been reflected in the conventional media’s transformation route, where all this integration has resulted in new strategies, means, and tools for producing diversified content for multi-platforms to keep up with new trends and practices. This chapter discusses the extent to which the Aljazeera channel has integrated digital technology into TV program creation, as well as the new trends in TV program production and the strategies utilised to stay current with all the changes and transformations. The chapter focuses mainly on the trends and practices adopted by Aljazeera in attracting more audiences to television programs, increasing their interactivity, newsgathering, audience engagement, distribution of TV production on social media platforms, producing various content for multi-screens, and enhancing the integration between TV screen, Internet, and digital platforms.
Purpose: Automation in journalistic processes is increasingly being discussed in media research and practice. Automated journalism (AJ) enables the fast production of numerous articles in real-time and in various languages. However, given the clear economic benefits of the technology, Automated journalism is only adopted in a minority of newsrooms and has still very limited fields of use. This article aims to contribute to the open question of why AJ is often rejected by professionals in the newsrooms, especially journalists, and which factors are perceived to be crucial for the rejection. Methodology: A systematic literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2016 and 2020 was conducted, which identified 40 rejection factors in the research literature. The factors were then analyzed on two dimensions: frequency and intensity. Findings: The results show that limited bias detection, credibility concerns, and unsolved issues of transparency are perceived as most influential for the rejection of Automated journalism in the newsroom. The study indicated furthermore that soft factors, such as perceived quality or ethical/social issues, are more difficult to overcome than hard factors, such as economic or legal issues.
The Internet has led to an unprecedented diversity in the news delivery sector. Today’s news consumers no longer inform themselves through newspapers alone. Rather it is radio and TV and increasingly also newspaper websites, social media channels, and dedicated news apps, which give them a great choice in how to keep up with ongoing developments. In this context, much hope has recently been placed on so-called news chatbots as a novel delivery format. Yet, little is known about the suitability of these chatbots as a news medium. Hence, the work presented in this paper aimed to trigger respective investigations by focusing on intrinsic motivation to use news chatbots and the resulting user engagement. In an experimental study (n = 60) we compared a linear news delivery mode in the form of a one-way newsflash delivered by a chatbot with a conversational news delivery mode in the form of back-and-forth chatbot interactions. Results show that people feel less pressured and stressed in the conversational mode, while the linear mode had a negative effect on the intrinsic motivation to use the chatbot. Furthermore, we found that the conversational mode had a positive impact on user engagement.KeywordsMedia industryNews consumptionChatbotsIntrinsic motivationUser engagement
The study aims to identify the techniques of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in many new technologies produced by that revolution, which will form artificial intelligence journalism. The dependence of some media on a “robot” in newsrooms or media institutions, which represents open data journalism, big data journalism, blockchain journalism, cloud journalism, and other tools that constitute the era of artificial intelligence journalism. The results also revealed that the provision of big data for press and media content seems astonishing, if the right moment comes to expand it, the press of artificial intelligence based on big data can provide contents that are difficult for human effort to come up with the same effort, time and cost.
Purpose
How does algorithmic information processing affect the thoughts and behavior of artificial intelligence (AI) users? In this study, the authors address this question by focusing on algorithm-based chatbots and examine the influence of culture on algorithms as a form of digital intermediation.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a study comparing the United States (US) and Japan to examine how users in the two countries perceive the features of chatbot services and how the perceived features affect user trust and emotion.
Findings
Clear differences emerged after comparing algorithmic information processes involved in using and interacting with chatbots. Major attitudes toward chatbots are similar between the two cultures, although the weights placed on qualities differ. Japanese users put more weight on the functional qualities of chatbots, and US users place greater emphasis on non-functional qualities of algorithms in chatbots. US users appear more likely to anthropomorphize and accept explanations of algorithmic features than Japanese users.
Research limitations/implications
Different patterns of chatbot news adoption reveal that the acceptance of chatbots involves a cultural dimension as the algorithms reflect the values and interests of their constituencies. How users perceive chatbots and how they consume and interact with the chatbots depends on the cultural context in which the experience is situated.
Originality/value
A comparative juxtaposition of cultural-algorithmic interactions offers a useful way to examine how cultural values influence user behaviors and identify factors that influence attitude and user acceptance. Results imply that chatbots can be a cultural artifact, and chatbot journalism (CJ) can be a socially contextualized practice that is driven by the user's input and behavior, which are reflections of cultural values and practices.
Misinformation has developed into a critical societal threat that can lead to disastrous societal consequences. Although fact-checking plays a key role in combating misinformation, relatively little research has empirically investigated work practices of professional fact-checkers. To address this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 21 fact-checkers from 19 countries. The participants reported being inundated with information that needs filtering and prioritizing prior to fact-checking. The interviews surfaced a pipeline of practices fragmented across disparate tools that lack integration. Importantly, fact-checkers lack effective mechanisms for disseminating the outcomes of their efforts which prevents their work from fully achieving its potential impact. We found that the largely manual and labor intensive nature of current fact-checking practices is a barrier to scale. We apply these findings to propose a number of suggestions that can improve the effectiveness, efficiency, scale, and reach of fact-checking work and its outcomes.
This chapter deals with the transformation of local media in the European context, focusing the study on the digital scenario in Spain, France and Portugal. The respective media maps are used to determine the current weight of regional, local and hyperlocal digital media. Based on the characteristics of the media ecosystem in each country, we seek to identify common trends and specific characteristics of the global mutations in journalism in these countries. Special attention is paid to the way in which the media seek to (re)create proximity with their audiences through their editorial models, the forms and channels they establish for interaction with the public or the creation of collaborative relationships.KeywordsLocal journalismLocal mediaHyperlocal mediaUser participation
Conceptually aligned with the epistemologies of digital journalism, and in line with the definition of ‘total journalism’, this chapter presents a mapping of the contemporary digital journalist’s professional profile, highlighting the skills for ‘being’ a journalist, and ‘performing’ journalistic activities in the new century. This is based on meta-research conducted on the Scopus and Google Scholar databases,
and the Capes Catalogue, for a longitudinal study of the bibliographical framework between 2000 and 2020, combined with the application of a questionnaire with 31 legacy and local digital media editors in Brazil. Evidence indicates that contemporary digital journalistic work is experiencing a trend towards platformization and surrounded by constant adaptability to new technologies, journalism is undergoing a crisis continuum, accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic. With insecure work, and a context of datafication and algorithmization, the journalist needs to address the need for constant innovation and qualification, without neglecting the ethos of the
profession.
In the face of increasing public distrust for journalistic institutions, stories sourced from artificially intelligent (AI) journalists have the potential to lower hostile media bias by activating the machine heuristic—a mental shortcut assuming machines are more unbiased, systematic, and accurate than are humans. An online experiment targeting issue partisans found support for the prediction: a story presented as sourced from an AI journalist activated the machine heuristic that, in turn, mitigated hostile media bias. This mediation effect was moderated: perceived bias was more strongly reduced as partisan-attitude extremity increased.
In this essay, we reconstruct a keyword for communication—affordance. Affordance, adopted from ecological psychology, is now widely used in technology studies, yet the term lacks a clear definition. This is especially problematic for scholars grappling with how to theorize the relationship between technology and sociality for complex socio-technical systems such as machine-learning algorithms, pervasive computing, the Internet of Things, and other such “smart” innovations. Within technology studies, emerging theories of materiality, affect, and mediation all necessitate a richer and more nuanced definition for affordance than the field currently uses. To solve this, we develop the concept of imagined affordance. Imagined affordances emerge between users’ perceptions, attitudes, and expectations; between the materiality and functionality of technologies; and between the intentions and perceptions of designers. We use imagined affordance to evoke the importance of imagination in affordances—expectations for technology that are not fully realized in conscious, rational knowledge. We also use imagined affordance to distinguish our process-oriented, socio-technical definition of affordance from the “imagined” consensus of the field around a flimsier use of the term. We also use it in order to better capture the importance of mediation, materiality, and affect. We suggest that imagined affordance helps to theorize the duality of materiality and communication technology: namely, that people shape their media environments, perceive them, and have agency within them because of imagined affordances.
Prompted by the ongoing development of content personalization by social networks and mainstream news brands, and recent debates about balancing algorithmic and editorial selection, this study explores what audiences think about news selection mechanisms and why. Analysing data from a 26-country survey (N = 53,314), we report the extent to which audiences believe story selection by editors and story selection by algorithms are good ways to get news online and, using multi-level models, explore the relationships that exist between individuals’ characteristics and those beliefs. The results show that, collectively, audiences believe algorithmic selection guided by a user’s past consumption behaviour is a better way to get news than editorial curation. There are, however, significant variations in these beliefs at the individual level. Age, trust in news, concerns about privacy, mobile news access, paying for news, and six other variables had effects. Our results are partly in line with current general theory on algorithmic appreciation, but diverge in our findings on the relative appreciation of algorithms and experts, and in how the appreciation of algorithms can differ according to the data that drive them. We believe this divergence is partly due to our study’s focus on news, showing algorithmic appreciation has context-specific characteristics. © 2018, The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This article responds to recent debates in critical algorithm studies about the significance of the term “algorithm.” Where some have suggested that critical scholars should align their use of the term with its common definition in professional computer science, I argue that we should instead approach algorithms as “multiples”—unstable objects that are enacted through the varied practices that people use to engage with them, including the practices of “outsider” researchers. This approach builds on the work of Laura Devendorf, Elizabeth Goodman, and Annemarie Mol. Different ways of enacting algorithms foreground certain issues while occluding others: computer scientists enact algorithms as conceptual objects indifferent to implementation details, while calls for accountability enact algorithms as closed boxes to be opened. I propose that critical researchers might seek to enact algorithms ethnographically, seeing them as heterogeneous and diffuse sociotechnical systems, rather than rigidly constrained and procedural formulas. To do so, I suggest thinking of algorithms not “in” culture, as the event occasioning this essay was titled, but “as” culture: part of broad patterns of meaning and practice that can be engaged with empirically. I offer a set of practical tactics for the ethnographic enactment of algorithmic systems, which do not depend on pinning down a singular “algorithm” or achieving “access,” but which rather work from the partial and mobile position of an outsider.
This contribution compares personalisation strategies of public service media (PSM) and how these are reconciled with PSM’s core values, especially universality. To this end, it combines mapping of a sample of PSM with in-depth analysis of Flemish VRT and Norwegian NRK. The theoretical framework discusses universality in relationship to PSM’s historical remit and to contemporary personalisation through digital options like algorithms. Subsequently, strategies of the sampled PSM are analysed, using data from documents, an online survey and interviews. Results suggest that most PSM, including VRT and NRK, engage in implicit and explicit digital personalisation, yet vary in type of engagement and in views on how personalisation strengthens or threatens universality. It is argued that histories and the understanding of technology within specific institutions affect their personalisation approach. We argue that policies focus on news and information but that negotiating universality and personalisation, while dealing with issues like filter bubbles and privacy, extends to the entire range of PSM programmes and goals.
Software applications (apps) are now prevalent in the digital media environment. They are the site of significant sociocultural and economic transformations across many domains, from health and relationships to entertainment and everyday finance. As relatively closed technical systems, apps pose new methodological challenges for sociocultural digital media research. This article describes a method, grounded in a combination of science and technology studies with cultural studies, through which researchers can perform a critical analysis of a given app. The method involves establishing an app’s environment of expected use by identifying and describing its vision, operating model and modes of governance. It then deploys a walkthrough technique to systematically and forensically step through the various stages of app registration and entry, everyday use and discontinuation of use. The walkthrough method establishes a foundational corpus of data upon which can be built a more detailed analysis of an app’s intended purpose, embedded cultural meanings and implied ideal users and uses. The walkthrough also serves as a foundation for further user-centred research that can identify how users resist these arrangements and appropriate app technology for their own purposes.
This essay examines the power differentials between humans and vocal social agents, such as Siri, that are established in human-machine communication. The form of interaction between user and agent, the agent’s responses to the user, and the agent’s vocal characteristics, including gender, create a “face” for the ephemeral program. The communicative design of Siri establishes the artificial intelligence application on Apple products as a subservient female working for the user, but Siri’s face simultaneously masks its function as a program in service to Apple. Implications for the study of agents, social bots, and other AI programs are discussed.
Publisher website: https://www.routledge.com/Socialbots-and-Their-Friends-Digital-Media-and-the-Automation-of-Sociality/Gehl-Bakardjieva/p/book/9781138639409
In this essay, we reconstruct a keyword for communication—affordance. Affordance, adopted from ecological psychology, is now widely used in technology studies, yet the term lacks a clear definition. This is especially problematic for scholars grappling with how to theorize the relationship between technology and sociality for complex socio-technical systems such as machine-learning algorithms, pervasive computing, the Internet of Things, and other such “smart” innovations. Within technology studies, emerging theories of materiality, affect, and mediation all necessitate a richer and more nuanced definition for affordance than the field currently uses. To solve this, we develop the concept of imagined affordance. Imagined affordances emerge between users’ perceptions, attitudes, and expectations; between the materiality and functionality of technologies; and between the intentions and perceptions of designers. We use imagined affordance to evoke the importance of imagination in affordances—expectations for technology that are not fully realized in conscious, rational knowledge. We also use imagined affordance to distinguish our process-oriented, socio-technical definition of affordance from the “imagined” consensus of the field around a flimsier use of the term. We also use it in order to better capture the importance of mediation, materiality, and affect. We suggest that imagined affordance helps to theorize the duality of materiality and communication technology: namely, that people shape their media environments, perceive them, and have agency within them because of imagined affordances.
How “real” are computer personalities? Using a psychological criterion for “reality,” 2 studies tested whether people respond to computer personalities the same way they tend to respond to human personalities. In Experiment 1, dominant and submissive subjects were randomly matched with a computer endowed with the personality characteristics associated with dominance or submissiveness (N = 48). Consistent with similarity-attraction theory in interpersonal interaction, subjects were more attracted to the similar computer compared to the dissimilar computer. Experiment 2 (N = 88) used the same experimental design to assess users' psychological responses to changes in personality-based behavior in computers. Consistent with gain-loss theory in interpersonal interaction, changes in the direction of similarity had a more positive effect on attraction than a consistently similar personality. Loss effects were not obtained. The findings suggest that computer personalities are psychologically real to users.
This article considers the concept of media citizenship in relation to the digital strategies of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). At SBS, Australia's multicultural public broadcaster, there is a critical appraisal of its strategies to harness user-created content (UCC) and social media to promote greater audience participation through its news and current affairs Web sites. The article looks at the opportunities and challenges that user-created content presents for public service media organizations as they consolidate multiplatform service delivery. Also analyzed are the implications of radio and television broadcasters' moves to develop online services. It is proposed that case study methodologies enable an understanding of media citizenship to be developed that maintains a focus on the interaction between delivery technologies, organizational structures and cultures, and program content that is essential for understanding the changing focus of 21st-century public service media.
this article will attempt a fresh conceptualization of source. It will first explicate the concept of source as used in past communication research. It will identify key conceptions of source in the literature and use them to create a typology. The strength of the resulting typology will be evaluated along three criteria: (a) It should apply to all media, particularly new online media; (b) the distinctions in the typology should have ontological rationale; and (c) they should engender psychological differences among media audiences
Public broadcasting was the single most important social, cultural, and journalistic institution of the twentieth century. In the 15 years preceding the publication of this book, it had been assaulted politically, ideologically, technologically, and was everywhere in retreat. This book considers the idea of public service broadcasting and examines in detail the assault made upon it, with specific emphasis on global developments and events in the United Kingdom, Japan, Europe, and the United States. It argues that public service broadcasting has been a vital and democratically significant institution now experiencing a terminal decline brought about by changes in political, economic, and technological circumstances. Based on years of research and extensive contact with leading public broadcasters around the world, the book examines the idea of public service broadcasting and how for the most part it has vainly (and often ineffectually) struggled to survive. It concludes that public broadcasting is, as was once said of Weimar, a corpse on leave. Its likely disappearance constitutes an indication of a real and deep-seated crisis within liberal democracy.
Public broadcasting was the single most important social, cultural, and journalistic institution of the twentieth century. In the 15 years preceding the publication of this book, it had been assaulted politically, ideologically, technologically, and was everywhere in retreat. This book considers the idea of public service broadcasting and examines in detail the assault made upon it, with specific emphasis on global developments and events in the United Kingdom, Japan, Europe, and the United States. It argues that public service broadcasting has been a vital and democratically significant institution now experiencing a terminal decline brought about by changes in political, economic, and technological circumstances. Based on years of research and extensive contact with leading public broadcasters around the world, the book examines the idea of public service broadcasting and how for the most part it has vainly (and often ineffectually) struggled to survive. It concludes that public broadcasting is, as was once said of Weimar, a corpse on leave. Its likely disappearance constitutes an indication of a real and deep-seated crisis within liberal democracy.
Once regarded as a system in decline, public service broadcasters have acquired renewed legitimacy in the digital environment, as drivers of digital take-up, innovators and trusted brands.
Exploring this remarkable transformation, Reinventing Public Service Television for the Digital Future engages with the new opportunities and challenges facing public service media, outlining the ways in which interactive technologies are now expanding the delivery of diverse goals and enhancing public accountability.
Drawing on fifty interviews with media industry and academic specialists from four countries this seminal work explores the constraints and possibilities of the public service system and its prospects for continued survival in the age of on-demand media.
This article explores the conditions for multicultural sociability facilitated by online current affairs forums hosted by Australia's multicultural public service broadcaster, SBS. Multicultural sociability is defined as exchange of opinion, information-sharing and mutual acknowledgement within a commonly understood framework for participation. The analysis suggests that conversations facilitated by multicultural online forums are an important resource in a culturally diverse society as they offer up important new forms of participation and opportunities for mutual recognition and the exchange of views.
So-called “robot” journalism represents a shift towards the automation of journalistic tasks related to news reporting, writing, curation, and even data analysis. In this paper, we consider the extension of robot journalism to the domain of social platforms and study the use of “news bots”—automated accounts that participate in news and information dissemination on social networks. Such bots present an intriguing development opportunity for news organizations and journalists. In particular, we analyze a sample of existing news bot accounts on Twitter to understand how news bots are currently being used and to examine how using automation and algorithms may change the modern media environment. Based on our analysis, we propose a typology of news bots in the form of a design and editorial decision space that can guide designers in defining the intent, utility, and functionality of future bots. The proposed design space highlights the limits of news bots (e.g., automated commentary and opinion, algorithmic transparency and accountability) and areas where news bots may enable innovation, such as niche and local news.
This article investigates how the rise of social media affects European public service broadcasting (PSB), particularly in the United Kingdom and The Netherlands. We explore the encounter of “social” and “public” on three levels: the level of institution, professional practice, and content. After investigating these three levels, we address the more general question of how public broadcasters are coping with the challenges of social media. How can public television profit from the abilities of social media to engage new young audiences (and makers) without compromising public values? And will PSB be able to extend the creation of public value outside its designated space to social media at large? While the boundaries between public and corporate online space are becoming progressively porous, the meaning of “publicness” is contested and reshaped on the various levels of European public broadcasting.
This study attempts a new conceptualization of communication ‘sources’ by proposing a typology of sources that would apply not only to traditional media but also to new online media. Ontological rationale for the distinctions in the typology is supplemented by psychological evidence via an experiment that investigated the effects of different types of source attributions upon receivers' perception of online news content. Participants (N=48) in a 4-condition, between-participants experiment read 6 identical news stories each through an online service. Participants were told that the stories were selected by 1 of 4 sources: news editors, the computer terminal on which they were accessing the stories, other audience members (or users) of the online news service, or (using a pseudo-selection task) the individual user (self). After reading each online news story, all participants filled out a paper-and-pencil questionnaire indicating their perceptions of the story they had just read. In confirmation of the distinctions made in the typology, attribution of identical content to 4 different types of online sources was associated with significant variation in news story perception. Theoretical implications of the results as well as the typology are discussed.
Relationships to Social Robots: Towards a Triadic Analysis of Media-oriented Behavior
- Joachim R Höflich
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Was the Year of the Bot - Here’s a Brief History of How They Have Been Used in Journalism
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Socialbots and their friends: Digital media and the automation of sociality
- Andrea L Guzman
The ABC: A Case Study in Updating PSB in Politically Polarised and Cash-Strapped Times
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ABC’s Michelle Guthrie says Netflix deal allows for quality programming
- Max Mason
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My Friends, Editors, Algorithms, and I.” Digital Journalism
- Neil Thurman
- Judith Moeller
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