Guide to Automated Journalism

This report evaluates the role of automated journalism, currently used to produce routine news stories for repetitive topics for which clean, accurate and structured data are available. Evidence available to date shows that while people rate automated news as slightly more credible than human-written news, they do not enjoy reading it since the writing is perceived as boring. While algorithms can describe what is happening, they cannot provide interpretations of why things are happening. Journalists are best advised to focus on tasks that algorithms cannot perform, such as in-depth analyses, interviews with key people, and investigative reporting.

Project lead: Andreas Graefe