Tag Archives: robot journalism

VIDEO: How automation played a central role in data journalism — and is now playing it again

1 Reply

Automation was key to the work of data journalism pioneers such as Adrian Holovaty — and it’s becoming increasingly central once again. This video, made for students on the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University, explores the variety of roles that automation plays in data journalism; new concepts such as robot journalism, natural language generation (NLG) and structured journalism; and how data journalists’ editorial role becomes “delegated to the future” through the creation of algorithms.

You can find the video about Poligraft, and the FT on robot journalism at those links.

This video is shared as part of a series of video posts.

VIDEO: What is data journalism — and why is it growing so much?

Leave a reply

Data journalism isn’t just about spreadsheets and interactives: in this video from my MA Data Journalism classes at Birmingham City University I look at why the news industry has expanded its focus on data journalism over the past decade, and how thinking about definitions of data journalism can help reporters think more broadly about potential stories and subjects beyond official statistics.

I also look at related terms such as computational journalism, robot journalism and augmented journalism — and what we can learn from those definitions as practitioners.

This is part of a series of videos recorded during the coronavirus pandemic.

Announcing the line up for Data Journalism UK 2017

Leave a reply

The Bureau Local's Megan Lucero

The Bureau Local’s Megan Lucero

We’ve confirmed the line up for this year’s Data Journalism UK conference on December 5 — and I’m pretty excited about it.

We’ve managed to pack in networked data journalism and investigations, automation and the internet of things, and some practical sessions too, with my new MA Data Journalism students pitching in to help.

Tickets are available here including early bird and afternoon-only options, but you’ll need to be quick — the event sold out last year.

Here’s more detail on the running order… Continue reading →

The ‘Metajournalist’ and the return of personalised news: research on automated reporting

5 Replies

Matt Carlson has written an interesting piece of research (£) into ‘The Robotic Reporter’: namely, automated journalism where articles are written by algorithms.

His interest lies largely in the “technological drama” of competing narratives and cultures – but along the way he identifies some developments and implications which appear in the minority of reports beyond those recurring stories of “augmentation or elimination” (of journalists’ jobs), but which may be more interesting. Continue reading →

Transfer rumours, robot journalism and The Guardian: when it makes sense to put a poll BEFORE the article

Leave a reply

Football transfer rumours Daley Blind to Manchester United Football theguardian.com

Nice work by The Guardian (above) in their online reporting on transfer rumours: readers of each report are presented with a vote on whether they think the rumour is likely to be true before they get to read the full article.

It’s a good example of putting interactivity – and distribution – front and centre when the headline has already done most of the editorial work. Continue reading →