News Bots

Abstract

So-called “robot” journalism represents a shift towards the automation of journalistic tasks related to news reporting, writing, curation, and even data analysis. In this paper, we consider the extension of robot journalism to the domain of social platforms and study the use of “news bots”—automated accounts that participate in news and information dissemination on social networks. Such bots present an intriguing development opportunity for news organizations and journalists. In particular, we analyze a sample of existing news bot accounts on Twitter to understand how news bots are currently being used and to examine how using automation and algorithms may change the modern media environment. Based on our analysis, we propose a typology of news bots in the form of a design and editorial decision space that can guide designers in defining the intent, utility, and functionality of future bots. The proposed design space highlights the limits of news bots (e.g., automated commentary and opinion, algorithmic transparency and accountability) and areas where news bots may enable innovation, such as niche and local news.

Keywords:

• algorithmic journalism
• automated journalism
• bots
• computational journalism
• news bots
• social media
• Twitter

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA

The raw data, including the accounts that were analyzed for this study, have been made available for research purposes and can be downloaded at https://goo.gl/ORU1Yz (Google spreadsheet, can be downloaded as .xls or .csv).

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See http://blog.automatedinsights.com/post/109491692518/automation-helps-ap-publish-10-times-more-earnings.

2. See http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121551/bot-bubble-click-farms-have-inflated-social-media-currency.

3. See http://tinysubversions.com/botsummit/2014/.

4. See http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16108876.

5. See http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428286/twitter-mischief-plagues-mexicos-election/.

6. See http://truthy.indiana.edu/botornot/.

Additional information

Funding

No grants were used to support this research.