News automation, materialities, and the remix of an editorial process

Abstract

Software studies is a research field that focuses on the social and cultural implications of the software. They are grounded by interdisciplinarity, borrowing to digital humanities, cultural studies, or new media studies. Their application domains are as heterogeneous as software can be, from interfaces to new digital mediatic forms. This paper examines the relevance of software studies for journalism studies in the context of automated news production, where technological artifacts can also be understood as being shaped by professional values and cultural practices. It also explores methods nourished by software studies’ theories to tackle news automation through a process-oriented approach. The cursor is placed on the materiality of the upstream components of automated news production: the data that feed the systems and the process that will make the news. Automated news production appears as a remixed editorial process nourished by previous editorial experiences that will be standardized through a some-how imitation game where technological and human mediation interplay. This paper addresses the issue of transparency with the flattening of the processes at work, relying on theories and methodological tools based on software studies.

Use of generative artificial intelligence in the training of journalists: challenges, uses and training proposal

“…Other studies have focused on understanding the impact of automated news on media professionals (Danzon-Chambaud; Cornia, 2021; Túñez-López, 2021), the adoption of supervised machine learning in journalism studies (De-Grove; Boghe; De-Marez, 2020), news trust and credibility (Sinatra; Hofer, 2023; Fletcher; Schifferes; Thurman, 2023) as well as the challenges and debates surrounding automated journalism and AI research (De-Lima-Santos; Salaverría, 2021). Additionally, interdisciplinary research fields like software studies have examined the social and cultural implications of software, including its role in automated news production within journalism (Dierickx, 2023).…”

At the crossroads of logics: Automating newswork with artificial intelligence—(Re)defining journalistic logics from the perspective of technologists

“…Although there are examples of convivial relationship between newsrooms and innovative technologies (e.g., Diakopoulos, 2019; Schapals & Porlezza, 2020), other examples point to apprehension. Dierickx (2019) describes a Belgian newsroom struggling to implement news automation; similarly, Belair‐Gagnon et al (2020) found intrapreneurial units experimenting with chatbots grappling with reconciling tensions between corporate logics and the professional logics of the newsrooms.…”

“…Journalism is recognized as a “craft” (Schapals & Porlezza, 2020), comparable to the “craftmanship” of technologists (Passi & Jackson, 2017, p. 2444), and is moved closer to a subjective expert system of the “editorial logic,” with objective decision‐making delegated to the “new knowledge logic” of AI (Gillespie, 2014, p. 192). This redefinition of newswork is ameliorated by framing the generated news as information or service content; “we [can] only describe facts, and you need more than that to be a good editor” (P4) (e.g., Carlson, 2015; Dierickx, 2019; Sirén‐Heikel et al, 2019).…”