This week’s post considers the potential future of journalism. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more widely used by many media platforms and companies. This week’s case study is about the December 2019 U.K General Election. AI and robotic journalism is something that the BBC in particular adopted in order to publish the results of the election.
AI and Journalism
Matt Carlson, who wrote ‘The Robotic Reporter’, says that automated journalism consists of algorithms that are used to covert data into news in real-time; there is no human intervention beyond the original programming of the software.
Associated Press (an American news company) was one of the first to use automated journalism for reporting. They have been reporting mainly on finance, sport and data statistics for the last 15 years. One of their recent examples of their use can be seen in their Apple’s Fiscal 1Q Earnings Snapshot, 2019. They use ‘Wordsmith’ , which can convert data from reports into news stories, and specifically engineered the language to write in a certain style.
The BBC and the U.K General Election, 12th December 2019
The BBC recently worked on a project called ‘Salco’ (Semi-Automated Local Content) to create their data. Salco is a five-step pipeline which “combines data processing, story generation and editorial approval into a simple one click process.” It can produce 100 unique stories each month,these mainly being based on local content. They also say that the automated system puts information into the BBC’s house style in order to stay formal and consistent.
The BBC announced that they would be using ‘semi-automated’ journalism in the December 2019 general election as incorporated into part of a broader announcement. They published detailed results about every constituency quickly after results came in using templates designed to handle most possibilities and any errors that could arise. These articles were then reviewed by journalists and published on appropriate web pages, hence the use of the phrase ‘semi-automated’. The BBC also used a TwitterBot, @BBCelection, to automatically tweet results as they came in. This incorporates two elements of digital technology; social media and artificial intelligence. The national result of the election that was tweeted via artificial intelligence can be seen here.
All of the tweets generated are very formulaic and do not feel as though they have come from a trustworthy journalist. Bylines reflect the erratic and human nature of journalistic content, according to Reich (2014). Maier (2005) says that journalism is already suffering from diminished credibility, therefore the exclusion of bylines may accelerate this lack of credibility further. However, the tweets were arguably very informative and gave of the required information for each constituency, including figures and graphs. This suggests that the content may be credible in the sense that it gives accurate and reliable information.
Strengths and Limitations of Automated Journalism
At face value, automated journalism presents itself as having a lot of potential. However, according to Dalen (2012) there are anxieties surrounding the future of journalism for humans after this robotic revelation. These anxieties were reflected in the sheer number of news articles surrounding the matter from companies such as The Guardian, Wired and The Atlantic. The BBC is a highly innovative and trusted broadcasting corporation, meaning that many people may have be worried about the quality of content they received about the election.
In 2015, Philana Patterson, Assistant Business Editor of Associated Press (AP), stated some of the benefits of automated journalism in a post. The post states, “We estimate the automation of earnings reports has freed up about 20 percent of the time that we had spread throughout the staff in producing earnings reports each quarter.” She also speaks of how she expects good journalists to be sceptical at first.
To Conclude…
Automated journalism is a term that is becoming more apparent as the digital world intensifies. The BBC is a very trusted broadcasting company used by a huge number of audiences panning across most demographics. It seems, although very formulaic, that the Twitter bot that the BBC used was a success. As for the future of journalism, Ericsson says that “the powerful combination of AI and next-generation networks will create new possibilities.” As artificial intelligence becomes smarter and more reliable, perhaps it will be more depended upon in the journalism world. Entirely customised articles may become apparent based on the reader’s informational needs.
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Further Reading:
Carlson. M., 2014. The Robotic Reporter. Digital Journalism [online], 3 (3), 416-431.
Dalen, A., 2012. The Algorithms Behind the Headlines. Journalism Practice [online], 6 (5-6), 648-658.
Maier, S., 2005. Accuracy Matters: A Cross-Market Assessment of Newspaper Error and
Credibility. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly [online], 82 (3), 533–551.
Reich, Z.and Klein-Avraham, I., 2014. Textual DNA. Journalism Practice [online], 8 (5), 619-631.
