Abstract
The 21st century is a reaffirmation of automation and through big data and data journalism begins to speak of the ‘robot journalism’, the ‘automated journalism’ and the weight of ‘cognitive journalism’. This article refers to how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is beginning to occupy a field traditionally dominated by the human factor in the management of information relations between organizations, the media and society by the application of data mining to generate algorithms that make it possible to automate the management and derive it to the work of bots in the elaboration of news. It also addresses how the journalistic profession lives apparently oblivious to the robotization of the newsrooms, although the origin of mass automation dates back to 2014 when Associated Press with Automated Insights and Zacks Investment Research generated 3000 news about ‘corporate profits’.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Anderson CW (2011) Notes towards an analysis of computational journalism. HIIG discussion paper series 2012(1), pp 1–25
Broussard M (2015) Artificial intelligence for investigative reporting: using an expert system to enhance journalists’ ability to discover original public affairs stories. Digit J 3(6):814–831. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.985497
Carlson M (2014) The robotic reporter: automated journalism and the redefinition of labor, compositional forms, and journalistic authority. Digit J 3(3):416–431. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.976412
Cervera J (2017) El futuro del periodismo es cyborg. Cuadernos de periodistas: revista de la Asociación de la Prensa de Madrid 34:102–109. Retrieved from http://www.cuadernosdeperiodistas.com/futuro-del-periodismo-ciborg
Chu Z, Gianvecchio S, Wang H, Jajodia S (2010) Who is tweeting on Twitter: human, bot, or cyborg?. In: Proceedings of the 26th annual computer security applications conference, Austin, Texas, 6–10 Dec. https://doi.org/10.1145/1920261.1920265
Clerwall C (2014) Enter the robot journalist. J Pract 8(5):519–531. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2014.883116
Cohen S, Hamilton JT, Turner F (2011) Computational journalism. Commun ACM 54(10):66–71. https://doi.org/10.1145/2001269.2001288
Córdoba-Guardado, S (2007) La representación del cuerpo futuro (Ph.D. dissertation). Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Retrieved from https://eprints.ucm.es/7536/1/T29917.pdf
Diakopoulos N (2014) Algorithmic accountability. Digit J 3(3):398–415. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.976411
Dickerson JP, Kagan V, Subrahmanian VS (2014) Using sentiment to detect bots on twitter: are humans more opinionated than bots? In: Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE/ACM international conference on advances in social networks analysis and mining, pp 620–627. https://doi.org/10.1109/asonam.2014.6921650
Dörr K (2016) Mapping the field of algorithmic journalism. Digit J 4(6):700–722. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2015.1096748
Edge A (2014) Ophan: key metrics informing editorial at The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/how-ophan-offers -bespoke-data-to-inform-content-at-the-guardian/s2/a563349
Fanta A (2017) Putting Europe’s robots on the map: automated journalism in news agencies. In: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Oxford. Retrieved from https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2017-09/Fanta%2C%20Putting%20Europe%E2%80%99s%20Robots%20on%20the%20Map.pdf
Ferrara E, Varol O, Davis C et al (2016) The rise of social bots. Commun ACM 59(7):96–104. https://doi.org/10.1145/2818717
Flew T, Christina Spurgeon AD, Swift A (2012) The promise of computational journalism. J Pract 6(2):157–171. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2011.616655
Gao T, Hullman JR, Adar E et al (2014) Newsviews: an automated pipeline for creating custom geovisualizations for news. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, April 26–May 1. https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557228
Glahn HR (1970) Computer worded forecasts. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 51(12):1126–1132. Retrieved from https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0477%281970%29051%3C1126%3ACPWF%3E2.0.CO%3B2
Graefe A (2016) Guide to automated journalism. Retrieved from https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/guide_to_automated_journalism.php
Graefe A, Haim M, Haarmann B et al (2016) Readers’ perception of computer-generated news: credibility, expertise, and readability. Journalism 19(5):595–610. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884916641269
Gynnild A (2014) Journalism innovation leads to innovation journalism: the impact of computational exploration on changing mindsets. Journalism 15(6):713–730. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884913486393
Hansen M, Roca-Sales M, Keegan J et al (2017) Artificial Intelligence: Practice and Implications for Journalism. Brown Institute for media innovation and the tow center for digital journalism. Columbia Journalism School. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8x92prd
Hwang T, Pearce I, Nanis M (2012) Socialbots: voices from the fronts. Interactions 19(2):38–45. https://doi.org/10.1145/2090150.2090161
Karlsen J, Stavelin E (2013) Computational journalism in norwegian newsrooms. J Pract 8(1):34–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2013.813190
Keeney M (2015) Future cast: will robots replace journalists like toll collectors? Publicity Club of New England. Retrieved from https://www.pubclub.org/837/future-cast-will-robots-replace-journalists-like-toll-collectors
Kim J, Lee K, Kim Y, Kuppuswamy NS, Jo J (2007) Ubiquitous robot: a new paradigm for integrated services. In: 2007 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation, pp 2853–2858
Latar NL (2014) Robot journalists: ‘Quakebot’ is just the beginning. Knowledge@Wharton, University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved from http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/will-robot-journalists-replace-humanl-ones
Latar NL (2015) The robot journalist in the age of social physics: the end of human Journalism? In: Einav G (ed) The new world of transitioned media: the economics of information, communication, and entertainment: the impacts of digital technology in the 21st century. Springer International Publishing, Switzerland, pp 65–80. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09009-2_6
Lecompte C (2015) Automation in the newsroom. Nieman Rep 69(3):32–45. Retrieved from http://niemanreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/NRsummer2015.pdf
Levy S (2012) The rise of the robot reporter. Wired 20(5):132–139
Lindén C (2017) Algorithms for journalism: the future of news work. J Media Innov 4(1):60–76. https://doi.org/10.5617/jmi.v4i1.2420
Lokot T, Diakopoulos N (2016) News bots: automating news and information dissemination on Twitter. Digit J 4(6):682–699. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2015.1081822
Marconi F, Siegman A (2017) The future of augmented journalism: a guide for newsrooms in the age of smart machines. About AP insights. Retrieved from https://insights.ap.org/uploads/images/the-future-of-augmented-journalism_ap-report.pdf
Matsumoto R, Nakayama H, Harada T et al (2007) Journalist robot: robot system making news articles from real world. Paper presented at the 2007 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation, Oct 29–Nov 2. https://doi.org/10.1109/iros.2007.4399598
Meehan JR (1977) TALE-SPIN, An interactive program that writes stories. Int Jt Conf Artif Intell 77(1):91–98. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.74.173
Meyer P (1975) Precision journalism. Commun Inf 1(1):164–165
Mittal S, Kumaraguru P (2014) Broker bots: analyzing automated activity during high impact events on twitter (Ph.D. dissertation). Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, New Delhi. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/pdf/1406.4286.pdf
Napoli P (2012) Audience evolution and the future of audience research. Int J Media Manag 14(2):79–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/14241277.2012.675753
Oremus W (2015) No more pencils, no more books. Slate. Retrieved from http://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Adaptive-learning-software-is-replacing-textbooks-and-upending-American-education.-Should-we-welcome-it.pdf
Powers M (2012) “In forms that are familiar and yet-to-be invented”: American journalism and the discourse of technologically specific work. J Commun Inq 36(1):24–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/0196859911426009
Renó D, Renó L (2017) Algoritmo y noticia de datos como el futuro del periodismo transmedia imagético. Rev Lat de Comunicación Soc 72:1468–1482. https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2017-1229
Reuters Institute and University of Oxford (2017) Digital news report. Retrieved from http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2017/
Rivera-Estrada JE, Sánchez-Salazar DV (2016) Inteligencia artificial ¿reemplazando al humano en la psicoterapia? Escritos 24(53):271–291. https://doi.org/10.18566/escr.v24n53.a02
Salazar I (2018) Los robots y la inteligencia artificial. Nuevos retos del periodismo. Doxa Comunicación 27:295–315. https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n27a15
Shearer M, Basile S, Geiger C (2014) Datastringer: easy dataset monitoring for journalists. In: Proceedings of symposium on computation + journalism
Slater MD, Rouner D (2002) Entertainment-education and elaboration likelihood: understanding the processing of narrative persuasion. Commun Theor 12(2):173–191. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2002.tb00265.x
Starbird K, Leysia P, Hughes A et al (2010) Chatter on the red: what hazards threat reveals about the social life of microblogged information. In: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work, Savannah, Georgia, 6–10 Feb. Retrieved from https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1718918.1718965
Stavelin E (2014) Computational journalism: when journalism meets programming (Ph.D. dissertation). University of Bergen
Steiner T (2014) Telling breaking news stories from Wikipedia with social multimedia: a case study of the 2014 winter olympics. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1403/1403.4289.pdf
Strömbäck J (2005) In search of a standard: four models of democracy and their normative implications for journalism. J Stud 6(3):331–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700500131950
Tavares G, Faisal A (2013) Scaling-laws of human broadcast communication enable distinction between human, corporate and robot Twitter users. PLoS ONE 8(7):e65774. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065774
Thurman N, Dörr K, Kunert J (2017) When reporters get hands-on with robo-writing: professionals consider automated journalism’s capabilities and consequences. Digit J 5(10):1240–1259. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1289819
Túñez-López JM, Toural-Bran C, Cacheiro-Requeijo S (2018) Uso de bots y algoritmos para automatizar la redacción de noticias: percepción y actitudes de los periodistas en España. El profesional de la información 27(4):750–758. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2018.jul.04
Usher N (2017) Venture-backed news startups and the field of journalism. Digit J 5(9):1116–1133. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2016.1272064
Van Dalen A (2012) The algorithms behind the headlines. J Pract 6(5–6):648–658. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2012.667268
Winkler M (2014) The bloomberg way: a guide for reporters and editors. Wiley, New Jersey
Wölker A, Powell TE (2018) Algorithms in the newsroom? News readers perceived credibility and selection of automated journalism. Journalism (Online first, Feb 18). https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918757072
Young M, Hermida A (2015) From Mr. and Mrs. Outlier to central tendencies. Computational journalism and crime reporting at the Los Angeles Times. Digit J 3(3):381–397. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.976409
Acknowledgements
This text has been prepared within the framework of New values, governance, funding and public media services for the Internet society: European and Spanish contrasts (RTI2018-096065-B-I00) project, of Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, co-financed by FEDER; and within the framework of Digital native media in Spain: storytelling formats and mobile strategy (RTI2018-093346-B-C33) project, of Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, co-financed by the ERDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Túñez-López, J.M., Toural-Bran, C., Frazão-Nogueira, A.G. (2020). From Data Journalism to Robotic Journalism: The Automation of News Processing. In: Vázquez-Herrero, J., Direito-Rebollal, S., Silva-Rodríguez, A., López-García, X. (eds) Journalistic Metamorphosis. Studies in Big Data, vol 70. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36315-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36315-4_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-36314-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-36315-4
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)