SciCAR 2019

As automation and computational journalism have become multi-interpretative concepts, it has become increasingly important to distinguish the various levels of automation. However, little is theoreticized of the medium-specific aspects and functioning of automation in professional journalism. We will create a typology of the various levels of automation - also categorizing the points of overlap and divergence. Based on an extensive literature review, we present four levels of automation and evaluate their epistemological and professional dimensions. In addition, we will distill a framework out of the aforementioned levels that will be applied on the implications of computational journalistic trajectories on quantitative and qualitative micro-processes in the gathering, production, distribution and the ability of fact checking in a newsroom. We argue that this typology and its framework should be taken into account in order to understand evolving patterns and the upcoming challenges of automation in journalism research.