Automated Journalism

TL;DR

Automated journalism leverages computer algorithms to produce routine news content from structured data, impacting newsroom practices, journalist roles, and raising concerns about bias and ethical implications.

Contribution

This paper provides an overview of automated journalism's development, applications, and implications, highlighting its potential and challenges in the evolving media landscape.

Findings

Automated journalism is used by major outlets like AP and NYT for financial and sports news.

Early algorithms are effective for generating routine news from structured data.

Concerns include algorithmic bias and changes in newsroom roles.

Abstract

Developed as a response to the increasing popularity of data-driven journalism, automated journalism refers to the process of automating the collection, production, and distribution of news content and other data with the assistance of computer programs. Although the algorithmic technologies associated with automated journalism remain in the initial stage of development, early adopters have already praised the usefulness of automated journalism for generating routine news based on clean, structured data. Most noticeably, the Associated Press and The New York Times have been automating news content to cover financial and sports issues for over a decade. Nevertheless, research on automated journalism is also alerting to the dangers of using algorithms for news creation and distribution, including the possible bias behind AI systems or the human bias of those who develop computer programs. The popularization of automated news content also has important implications for the infrastructure of the newsroom, the role performance of journalists and other non-journalistic professionals, and the distribution of news content to a datafied audience.