I, Robot. You, Journalist. Who is the Author?

• In Event: Robots, Machines, and Algorithms: Perspectives on Automated Journalism

Abstract

A recent technological development embraced by a minority of pioneering journalistic organizations presents the ability of algorithms to generate journalistic content automatically and (to some extent) autonomously, referred as “automated journalism” or “robot journalism”. This phenomenon holds significant practical, sociopolitical, psychological, legal and occupational ramifications on both news organizations, journalists and the audience. One of its most controversial aspects is the algorithmic authorship. The purpose of this study is to suggest a crediting policy for automated news. Findings are based on interviews with key figures from these organizations and a quantitative content analysis of automated stories. The study detects major discrepancies between the anthropomorphic perceptions of the studied organizations toward algorithmic authorship and their lack of consistent attribution policies, in the background of deeply integrated scholarly theories. To mitigate these discrepancies, we suggest a consistent and comprehensive crediting policy for attribution of automated journalistic content, while sponsoring the public interest.

Authors

• Tal Montal, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

• Zvi Reich, Ben-Gurion U of the Negev