Dr. Theresa Körner

Generalized Trust in Automated Journalism. On German Readers’ Perception of Trust, the Influencing Factors and the Stability of Generalized Trust Judgments in Automated Journalism.

Automated journalism’ (also robot journalism) describes the possibility of automatically generating journalistic content through the use of appropriate software. So far, the technology has been used primarily in sports, financial and election reporting. In journalism, media innovations are not new phenomena; what is decisive is the changed role of journalists: the performance recognized as the core function of journalists – the structuring and writing of a text – did not appear substitutable by “robots,” “machines” or “AIs” to a broad public until recently. The extent to which technology will play a role in the future depends on the trust of readers. To this end, the paper examines how readers perceive automated reporting, which influencing factors play a role in the formation of trust, and how solid the trust judgments are.

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