Robot Journalism

The objective of this study is to analyze, based on the analysis of big data collected from SNS, the awareness among consumers and the society of AI-generated news that is spreading widely in the fields of journalism and media in line with the development of AI technology and thus to discuss the direction of AI journalism for its development in the future. For this analysis, big data were collected from Twitter and Instagram for 5 years. The keywords employed for analysis were AI news, AI-generated news, AI journalism, and robot journalism, all of which were examined by means of Python. As a result, "Artificial Intelligence," "AI news," "Aithority," and "Thestartuptoday" were derived as keywords. The result of network analysis shows that along with "artificial intelligence" and "AI news," technology-related terms such as "blockchain," "data," "machine learning," and "technology" were also regarded as important.

Today, news texts can be created automatically and presented to readers without human participation through technologies and methods such as big data, deep learning, and natural language generation. With this research, we have developed an application that can contribute to the literature regarding The Studies on Robot Journalism Applications with a technology-reductionist perspective. Robot journalism application named Robottan Al Haberi (the English equivalent of the application name is “get the news from the robot”) produces news text by placing weather, exchange rates, and earthquake data in certain templates. The news texts, which are produced by placing the data in appropriate spaces on the template and with a maximum length of 280 characters, are automatically shared via the Twitter account @robottanalhaber. The weather information is shared once a day, the exchange rate information is shared three times a day, and the earthquake information is shared instantly. Here, we aim to produce automatic and short news by using the available structured data by placing them in specific news templates suggesting different options or a combination of them for different situations.

While Artificial Intelligence journalism 2121 helps to highlight different opportunities and challenges in different regions of the world, with the transparency in the information, in transferring, in analysing big data, and in the availability of open data, it will help enhance the state’s power to end poverty and provide more livelihood opportunities which will be more welfare oriented than before.
ماذا تعرف عن صحافة الذكاء الاصطناعي؟
كيف يمكن أن توثر الثورة الصناعية الرابعة على هيكلة الإعلام ؟

This report is the result of the first phase of the project “New Teaching Fields for the Next Generation of Journalists” funded by Erasmus+. The project is embedded in the action type “Strategic partnerships for higher education” and will run for three years until August 2023. The primary goal of NEWSREEL2 is to improve such skills of a new generation of European journalists that are connected to the use of digital communication opportunities in a creative and responsible way for enhancing social benefits of the digital era. The project is the extension of NEWSREEL - New Skills for the Next Generation of Journalists.
The project focuses on nine professional fields: 1. Storytelling in social media, 2. Graphic journalism, 3. Improving democratic sensibility, 4. Covering migration, 5. Foreign coverage, 6. Journalism for voice-activated assistants and devices, 7. AI and journalism, robot journalism and algorithms, 8. Verifying and analysing fake news, 9. Debunking disinformation.
The project team consists of journalism and media scholars and journalists from the University of Pécs (Hungary), the Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism, an NGO named Hostwriter (Germany), the University Insitute of Lisbon (Portugal), the University of Bucharest (Romania) and the Masaryk University (Czech Republic).
The aim of this research was to introduce the new project fields in more depth and lay the foundations of the curricula and e-learning development. In the report we covered:
- the current status of these types of new skills and tools of journalism in the media field of the partner countries,
- the main media outlets and journalists that are using these skills and tools, some outstanding examples of these types of journalism,
- the needs of journalists and market players regarding the innovations in journalism education.
Therefore, we made an analysis of literature on the given topics, and interviews with four or five journalists per field from the participating countries. The interviews were based on a semi-structured interview guide consisting of both field-specific questions and a set of education-related questions, which were the same across all fields. We interviewed 41 journalists between March and June 2021, either via video calls or in written form through email-based questionnaires.
The results will help our consortium throughout the next steps of our project, as this research report is the outcome of just the first phase of NEWSREEL2. All educational materials produced by the project will be made openly and freely accessible through open licenses via the project’s website http://newsreel.pte.hu/ in English.

Context, convey, message, communicate, communication.... Being applied communicators obliges us to examine each part of the communication process from different perspectives. At this point, the message and its carriers have always played the leading role. In my first book, Yeni Medya ve Dokunmatik Toplum, I critically evaluated how digital communication tools transform society and how smartphones we use as tools turn into main goals.
We can now divide the world into pre-pandemic and post-pandemic periods. Before the pandemic, we were making suggestions such as we should reduce the use of technology and even apply a digital detox. We were constantly under- lining the need for digital minimalism and technology literacy. The concept of digital capitalism, which progressed rather slowly before the pandemic, gained momentum with the advent of the pandemic. By using almost all digital com- munication channels, we have been digitalized in many areas from economy to education, and to health. We were able to survive with digital communication opportunities and increased the problems that we thought we should reduce by using them even more.

The advent of new technologies leads to changes in journalism. Robot journalism, the automatically generated content, is the latest development in the field of  media and journalism. In this study, the phenomenon of robot journalism has been examined with the financial focus at every stage from production to distribution on the basis of media enterprises, employees and consumers by mentioning the process of artificial intelligence. The opinions of the media members about this new formation in journalism were obtained through a survey and the overall outcome of the case was tried to put forward in all aspects with all examples in the field by focusing on the pros and cons.
It is considered appropriate to conduct a descriptive / predictive study since the general literature on the subject is insufficient and robot journalism is not much yet included in the media enterprises in Turkey despite the fact that robot journalism practice is getting common  in the world.  In order to show the contribution of business development and R&D activities to media enterprises especially in terms of competition, in this study, the use of artificial intelligence in the media has taken its place in the eye of  technological investment.
My aim is to give researchers and practitioners an overview of the state of automated journalism in news agencies, and offer some suggestions for future.

İletişim teknolojilerinde kendini gösteren teknolojik gelişmeler haberciliğin dijitalleşmesini ve oluşturulan haberlerin birbirinden farklı kitlelere birçok mecradan iletilmesini ortaya çıkarmıştır. Haberin üretim, dağıtım ve hedef kitle gruplarında meydana gelen bu değişim, habere yeni eklemlemeler yapılmasının ve haberin teknolojik gelişmeler paralelinde yenilenmesinin önünü açmıştır. Bu noktada örnek gösterilecek olan yapay zekâ teknolojileri de haberciliğe etki ederek yeni haber biçimlerinin ortaya çıkmasına zemin hazırlamıştır. Söz gelimi robot gazetecilik, yapay zekâ sistemlerinin temellendirmesi sonucunda oluşan ve yakın geçmişe kadar hiç kullanılmamış bir habercilik türü olarak adından söz ettirmektedir. Bu bağlamda çalışmada robot gazetecilik, robot spikerler üzerinden örneklendirilerek bir haber paylaşım platformu olan YouTube’a yüklenen videolar üzerinden analiz edilmiştir. İçerik analizi yönteminin kullanıldığı çalışmada Türkçe ve İngilizce olarak videosu yüklenmiş olan bir kadın ve bir erkek robot haber spikerine gelen yorumlar ışığında farklı kullanıcıların yapay zekâ ve haber ilişkisine yönelik tutumları mercek altına alınarak analize tabi tutulmuştur. Araştırma neticesinde elde edilen yorumların robot spikerin cinsiyetine bağlı olarak farklılık gösterdiği, kadın robot spikere karşı cinsiyetçi söylemin egemen olduğu, yapay zekâ teknolojilerinin birçok mesleğin sonunu getireceğinin düşünüldüğü ve kullanıcıların büyük bir kısmının haberde yapay zekâ kullanımına karşı olumlu görüşte olmadığı görülmüştür.

Yeni teknolojilerin ortaya çıkışı gazetecilikte değişimlere yol açmaktadır. Robot gazetecilik kavramı, yani otomatik olarak üretilen içerik ise medya alanındaki en son gelişme olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Çalışmada robot gazetecilik olgusu, yapay zeka sürecinden bahsedilerek işletme, personel ve tüketici bazında üretimden dağıtıma her aşamada finansal odak noktasıyla incelenmiştir. Gazetecilik pratiğindeki bu yeni oluşuma dair medya mensuplarının anket yoluyla görüşleri alınmış, avantaj ve dezavantajlarına odaklanarak, olgunun genel getirisi yapılan örnek çalışmalarla birlikte her yönüyle ortaya koyulmaya çalışılmıştır.
Robot gazetecilik uygulaması dünyada denemelerine rastlamamıza rağmen ülkemizde medya işletmelerinde henüz tam anlamıyla yer almadığı için ve konu hakkındaki genel literatürün yetersiz olması nedeniyle betimsel / öngörüsel bir çalışma yapılması uygun görülmüştür. İş geliştirme ve Ar-Ge çalışmalarının özellikle rekabet açısından medya işletmelerine olan katkısını göstermek amacıyla medyada yapay zeka kullanımı, teknolojik yatırım nezdinde bu çalışmada yerini almıştır.
Bu çalışmanın amacı, araştırmacılara ve uygulayıcılara, haber ajanslarındaki otomatik gazeteciliğin durumuyla ilgili bir genel bakış sunmak ve öngörülerde bulunmaktır.

Medya ve gazetecilik alanı, bilgi ve iletişim teknolojilerinin şekillendirdiği bir süreçten geçmektedir. Bu sürecin temel dinamikleri olarak; internet, sosyal medya, yazılım teknolojileri, robotik, sanal gerçeklik uygulamaları gibi teknolojiler ve mecralar ön plana çıkmaktadır. Bu dijital dönüşümün bir diğer önemli boyutu da büyük veri olgusudur. Bu birikim ve sıçramaların somut yansımaları; veri gazeteciliği, bir bakışta gazetecilik, robot/otomatik gazetecilik, drone gazeteciliği ve sanal gerçeklik uygulamalarının kullanımı gibi görece yeni olgulardır. Öte yandan, âdeta hızına yetişilemeyen yeni iletişim ortamına karşı bir refleks olarak yavaş gazetecilik olgusu da son yıllarda gündeme gelmektedir. Çalışmada görece yeni gazetecilik pratikleri ve teknoloji uygulamaları, literatür taraması yöntemiyle irdelenmektedir. Bu teknolojik imkân ve potansiyeller, medya ve iletişim alanını her geçen gün daha fazla dönüştürmektedir.

The book addresses the questions: can the machine (AI) brain can be more creative than the human brain?; What the human journalist must do to win the war with the robot journalist; how the new automatic newsroom will look like, and how the new technologies including Immersive technologies (the Metaverse…) will affect journalistic story telling. The book was translated to Chinese by Tsinghua University Press.