SciCAR 2019

This paper explores how consumers evaluate news videos made with the help of automation against human-made equivalents. Nine focus groups were conducted with online news consumers. Participants were played a range of online news videos, including some that had been made using automation (although this was not disclosed to the participants), and prompted to discuss their reactions in depth. The results show consumers evaluate short-form online news videos using some of the same criteria used in evaluations of written news (see, e.g., Sundar 1999), but also others such as humour and relatability. Videos produced with the help of automation received mixed feedback, with some negative reactions to their reliance on still images and captions, and to the appropriateness of some of the accompanying images and music clips. Such feelings have not been revealed before in other research on automated journalism, although we cannot, yet, say whether that is because those other studies took a quantitative approach or because they focussed on text rather than video.