Automatically produced content written by robots is apparently now viewed as more credible, trustworthy, informative, and objective by the average reader. That’s according to a new study recently published in the scholarly journal of “Journalism Practice”.
The advent of services for automated news stories raises many questions, e.g. what are the implications for journalism and journalistic practice, can journalists be taken out of the equation of journalism, how is this type of content regarded (in terms of credibility, overall quality, overall liking, to mention a few aspects) by the readers?
Journalists interviewed about the study admitted that automated content may be a threat to some journalists as it “may put journalists doing routine tasks out of work”. They even believe that it “can be applied beyond sports reporting and also challenge the jobs of journalists in finance or real estate”. But the journalists emphasize a couple of strengths of human journalists as creativity, flexibility, and analytical skills, indicating that the more advanced journalism is not threatened by automated content.
There is still some validity to this view. Study participants who rated content from unknown sources did still rate much of the content written by humans as something they call “more pleasant to read”.
However, readers were sadly unable to distinguish automatically generated content from human produced content at rates much better than chance. “As far as this study is concerned, the readers are not able to discern automated content from content written by a human.”
One Response to “Journalists To Be Replaced By Robots?”
March 31
Will Sawin2015: First in-depth investigation by robots uncovers major scandal.