Bots and Journalists

• In Event: Do People Make Good Bots Bad?

Abstract

Different social agents -- human and non-human -- compete for attention, spread information and contribute to political debates online. Journalism is impacted by digital automation in two distinct ways: Through its potentially manipulative influence on reporting and thus public opinion (Woolley & Howard, 2016, Woolley, 2016), and by providing journalists with a set of new tools for providing insight, disseminating information, and connecting with audiences (Graefe, 2016; Lokot & Diakopoulos, 2015). This contribution focuses primarily on the first aspect, but also takes the second into account, because we argue that fears of automation in journalism may fuel reservations among journalists regarding the role of bots more generally.

To address the first aspect, we present the results of a quantitative content analysis of English-language mainstream media discourse on bots. Building on prior research on the reception of Bots (Ford et al, 2016), we focus on the following aspects in particular:
- the context in which bots are discussed,
- the evaluation ("good" for furthering transparency, "bad" because they spread propaganda),
- the implications for public deliberation (if any).

Secondly, we discuss the usage of bots and automation for the news media, using a small set of examples from the context of automated journalism (Johri, Han & Mehta, 2016). Bots are increasingly used to automate particular aspects of journalism, such as the generation of news items and the dissemination of content. Building on these examples we point to the “myriad ways in which news bots are being employed for topical, niche, and local news, as well as for providing higher-order journalistic functions such as commentary, critique, or even accountability” (Lokot & Diakopoulos, 2015, p. 2).

Author

• Cornelius Puschmann, Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research