What Comes After the Algorithm? An Investigation of Journalists’ Post-editing of Automated News Text

Thäsler-Kordonouri, Sina (2024): What Comes After the Algorithm? An Investigation of Journalists’ Post-editing of Automated News Text. In: Journalism Practice [Forthcoming]

Abstract

Journalists often perceive that automated journalism produces news texts that lack narrative and editorial quality. Therefore, they sometimes manually edit automated output before publication, creating so-called “post-edited” variants. Using an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design, this study aims to advance research on automated journalism by investigating the steps journalists say they take when post-editing and testing whether—and if so, how—these steps are reflected systematically on a larger scale in post-edited news texts. First, journalists’ statements about the post-editing process were gathered in semi-structured interviews. Then, qualitative content analysis of automated news stories and their post-edited offspring examined whether post-edited stories contain evidence of forms of editing not mentioned by the journalists. Second, the qualitative findings were investigated quantitatively using comparative content analysis (N = 282). The qualitative findings suggest that a range of editorial steps may be taken during post-editing. The quantitative analysis shows that some of these steps are reflected systematically in post-editing, resulting in significant differences between automated news stories and their post-edited offspring. However, findings also show differences between journalists’ reports and post-editing practice on a larger scale, including evidence that forms of editing were taking place that were not mentioned in the interviews.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Keywords: automated journalism; AI journalism; mixed-methods
• Fakultät: Sozialwissenschaften > Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft und Medienforschung (IfKW)
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 380 Handel, Kommunikation, Verkehr
• ISSN: 1751-2786
• Sprache: Englisch