Computer-written news tends to be rated higher than human-written news in terms of credibility but news consumers get more pleasure out of reading human-written news, write Andreas Graefe of Columbia University, LMU Munich, and Macromedia University, Mario Haim of LMU Munich, Bastian Haarmann of Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics and Hans-Bernd Brosius of LMU Munich.

Writers studied on people’s perception of automated computer-written news by conducting online experiment where they varied the article topic (sports, finance; within-subjects) and both the articles’ actual and declared source (either human-written, computer-written; between-subjects). News articles were rated on credibility, readability, and journalistic expertise.

Results show that the quality of computer-written news is competitive with that of human journalists for routine tasks.

Article Readers’ perception of computer-generated news: Credibility, expertise, and readability is published online by Journalism. Read the article here. Abstract public.

Picture: RoboClock by Tama Leaver, licence: CC BY-2.0