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Abstract

This chapter provides a summary of, and commentary on, academic studies focused on computational journalism. This chapter considers computational journalism to be the advanced application of computing, algorithms, and automation to the gathering, evaluation, composition, presentation, and distribution of news. As will be shown, the focus of computational journalism’s literature has broadened over time. An initial emphasis on searching for and analyzing data as part of investigative journalism endeavors has faded as automated news writing, novel forms of interactive news presentation, and personalized news distribution have been addressed. There has also been a growing critical engagement, tempering the early, broadly optimistic analyses with more realistic assessments of computation’s effects on the practice of journalism, its content, and reception. The chapter ends with a discussion of how the literature is evolving, addressing new practices — such as “sensor journalism” and interactive chatbots—and also questioning whether computational journalism’s technical essence has been adequately addressed by the sociological contributions to its current corpus.

Publication Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter to be published by Routledge in on 2019, available online: https://www.routledge.com/
Subjects:	P Language and Literature Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity > Journalism

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