Robot Journalism

World Scientific Publishing, 2018

The book addresses the questions: can the machine (AI) brain can be more creative than the human brain?; What the human journalist must do to win the war with the robot journalist; how the new automatic newsroom will look like, and how the new technologies including Immersive technologies (the Metaverse…) will affect journalistic story telling. The book was translated to Chinese by Tsinghua University Press.

2020

A new idiom "Robot Journalism" was created recently, meaning the use of robots in making journalistic content. 75% of media platforms, according to a study prepared by Reuters, have started using artificial intelligence in a real way to create content that forms the backbone of the media ( 1 ) ,The developer of one of the first robot journalist story writers, Kristian Hammond of Narrative Science, predicted that 90 % of the journalistic stories would be written by robots within 5–10 years. Ray Kurtzweil predicted that by the year 2040 computers will outsmart the human brain, at a point known as the "technological singularity" ( 2 ) .

Akta Fakulty filozofické Západočeské univerzity v Plzni, 2022

This paper explores a practical application of a weak, or narrow, artificial intelligence (AI) in the news media. Journalism is a creative human practice. This, according to widespread opinion, makes it harder for robots to replicate. However, writing algorithms are already widely used in the news media to produce articles and thereby replace human journalists. In 2016, Wordsmith, one of the two most powerful news-writing algorithms, wrote and published 1.5 billion news stories. This number is comparable to or may even exceed work written and published by human journalists. Robo-journalists' skills and competencies are constantly growing. Research has shown that readers sometimes cannot differentiate between news written by robots or by humans; more importantly, readers often make little of such distinctions. Considering this, these forms of AI can be seen as having already passed a kind of Turing test as applied to journalism. The paper provides a review of the current state of robo-journalism; analyses popular arguments about " robots' incapability " to prevail over humans in creative practices; and offers a foresight of the possible further development of robo-journalism and its collision with organic forms of journalism.

The advent of new technologies has always spurred questions about changes in journalism – its content, its means of production, and its consumption. A quite recent development in the realm of digital journalism is software-generated content, i.e. automatically produced content. Companies such as Automated Insights offer services that, according to themselves “humanizes big data sets by spotting patterns, trends and key insights and describing those findings in plain English that is indistinguishable from that produced by a human writer” (Automated Insights, 2012). This paper seeks to investigate how readers perceive software-generated content in relation to similar content written by a journalist. The study utilizes an experimental methodology where respondents were subjected to different news articles that were written by a journalist or software-generated. The respondents were then asked to answer questions about how they perceived the article; its overall quality, credibility, objectiveness etc. The paper presents the results from a first small-scale study and they indicate that the software-generated content is perceived as, for example, descriptive, boring and objective, but not necessarily discernable from content written by journalists. The paper discusses the results of the study and its implication for journalism practice.

Algorithmic journalism is “the step-by-step or statistical procedures by which information is translated from data into natural language text.” (Caswell & Dörr, 2017, p. 18). Besides algorithmic journalism, machine-generated content is also referred to as automated journalism, quantitative journalism, algorithmic journalism or robot journalism. (Anderson, 2012; Coddington, 2015; Caswell & Dörr, 2017) Companies like Narrative Science and Automated Insight are taking the lead in developing machine-generated content using Natural Language Generation (NLG). These newcomers emphasise that their purpose is not to replace human journalists but rather to provide a more sophisticated reporting engine that serves as a tool for journalists in their daily tasks. This paper examines questions that are raised in the media industry about this new technology by assessing its impact on the news-making process, the output, and the livelihoods of journalists and industry professionals.

DIGITAL FUTURE, 2021

Context, convey, message, communicate, communication.... Being applied communicators obliges us to examine each part of the communication process from different perspectives. At this point, the message and its carriers have always played the leading role. In my first book, Yeni Medya ve Dokunmatik Toplum, I critically evaluated how digital communication tools transform society and how smartphones we use as tools turn into main goals. We can now divide the world into pre-pandemic and post-pandemic periods. Before the pandemic, we were making suggestions such as we should reduce the use of technology and even apply a digital detox. We were constantly under- lining the need for digital minimalism and technology literacy. The concept of digital capitalism, which progressed rather slowly before the pandemic, gained momentum with the advent of the pandemic. By using almost all digital com- munication channels, we have been digitalized in many areas from economy to education, and to health. We were able to survive with digital communication opportunities and increased the problems that we thought we should reduce by using them even more.

NORDSCI International Conference on Social Sciences : Conference Proceedings. Book 1 / Vol. 2 : Sections Education and Educational Research, History, Language and Linguistics, Philosophy, Sociology and Healthcare, 2019

Due to the development of artificial intelligence and language-based software, automatic machines, which can generate news contents from data, are starting to be used in the editorial practice. Despite the fact that this field of editorial work is currently at its advent, it has been developing and improving relatively quickly. At present, robots for production of contents are implemented in editorial offices of large media, and are able to process huge amounts of data, while saving journalists' work. Robo-journalism, which is the result of an effective interconnection among informatics, statistics and reporting, is being vividly discussed not only in media practice, but also in professional circles. The study deals with robot journalism that uses intelligent software to produce news articles. Its application fundamentally redefines editorial routines, journalistic practices and existing models of editorial work. Media and journalism theorists are interested in the influence of robo-journalism on the editing process, the journalistic profession, the journalist as a creative person and their competences. The authors of the paper intend to broaden the awareness of this dynamically developing segment of new coverage and to point out its selected aspects in relation to media practice, but also theoretical reflection.

Mecmua, 2022

Communication is the most distinctive feature of human nature. Human communication methods, which were very limited and limited in the first periods of human history, started to develop after the invention of the printing press. With the spread of communication; as in various countries of the world; In media professionalism in our country, education campaign was made to train educated journalists. Those who have been educated in journalism schools opened under various names in Turkey since 1948, the media has developed and has taken a great stride in the field of communication. However, with the development of technology in recent years; 'Artificial Intelligence Robots', which have entered many areas of our lives, have also started to enter the media sector. 'Artificial Intelligence Journalists', which emerged especially with the initiatives of Microsoft, have recently begun to disturb media workers in many parts of the world. Experts and scientists warn the traditional journalists who are still working and recommend that they take precautions on the issue of 'Artificial Intelligence Journalists'. Besides, they also warn future journalists who are currently studying media at universities. In order to cope with “Artificial Intelligence Journalists”, besides the existing basic curriculum; They emphasize that taking some software courses such as Coding and Artificial Intelligence will be important for their future in the media. In this article, we will try to suggest solutions by examining these problems that artificial intelligence can bring to the media world, with the evaluation of experts.