Nicholas Diakopoulos
Biographic Data
| ID | 336711 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicholas Diakopoulos |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicholas |
| FAMILY NAME | Diakopoulos |
| SIGNATURE | DIAKOPOULOS N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5005-6123 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 59 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
AI Hype in Journalism
Beyond the Byline
Algorithmic News Content Personalization and Readers’ Attitudes
Election predictions in the news
Political journalism often tries to predict the future, especially the outcomes of elections. This has historically been accomplished through written articles or opinion pieces. A more recent development involves the publication of data-driven predictions in online news media. These news items not only contain an estimate for the election results but also often try to visualize potential uncertainties of the prediction. However, the ways in which…
Uses of Generative AI in the Newsroom
This study delves into journalists' perspectives on the perils and possibilities of using generative AI-tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and DALL-E in the newsroom. Semi-structured interviews with journalists from The Netherlands, and Denmark, who self-identify as early adopters of generative AI-tools, were conducted. Results reveal 16 different specific uses of generative-AI tools across the news reporting process, mostly situated in the news productio…
ChatGPT and the AI Act
It is not easy being a tech regulator these days. The European institutions are working hard towards finalising the AI Act in autumn, and then generative AI systems like ChatGPT come along! In this essay, we comment the European AI Act by arguing that its current risk-based approach is too limited for facing ChatGPT & co
The European AI Act and How It Matters for Research into AI in Media and Journalism
The protection of fundamental rights, and the human-centric, ethical and responsible use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in general is a central ambition of the European AI strategy, with no lesser goal than “spearhead[ing] the development of new ambitious global norms” (European Commission 2021). Like the General Data Protection Regulation before it, the draft AI Act can be expected to set a new tone for the debate around ‘responsib…
The Future of Design + Journalism
In this introduction to the special issue Design + Journalism, we present a manifesto about the future of design and journalism. This manifesto discusses the key areas that need attention in order to develop a more robust bridge between design and journalism. The manifesto is structured by the following three notions: (1) Recognizing design contributions in the field; (2) Integrating design into digital journalism studies through cultural shift; …
Algorithmic indifference
The role of recommendation systems in news consumption has been hotly contested. From one perspective, the combination of personalized recommendations and practically limitless content diminishes news consumption, as people turn to more entertaining fare. From another, algorithmic systems and social networks heighten incidental exposure, raising opportunities for news consumption regardless of explicit individual interest. In this work, we examin…
Facebook's News Feed Algorithm and the 2020 US Election
Facebook plays a substantial role in shaping exposure to news and information, a role that is particularly significant during democratic elections. This article aims to characterize Facebook's contribution to news exposure during the 2020 US election. Using internet browsing data from 1.3 million desktop panelists in the United States, we analyze audience flows from Facebook to news and information publishers ( N = 3,247 websites) labeled accordi…
Countering Algorithmic Bias and Disinformation and Effectively Harnessing the Power of AI in Media
Artificial intelligence (AI) is affecting the daily lives of billions of media users Algorithms are popular and effective tools utilized by companies online, but their popularity comes at the expense of systematic discrimination, limited transparency, and vague accountability Algorithmic filtering procedures may lead to more impartial, and thus possibly fairer processes than those processed by humans. However, algorithmic recommendation processes…
Partisan search behavior and Google results in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections
This research shows that members of different ideological groups in the United States can use different search terms when looking for information about political candidates, but that difference is not enough to yield divergent search results on Google. Search engines are central in information seeking during elections, and have important implications for the distribution of information and, by extension, for democratic society. Using a method inv…
Predicting Covid
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global health crisis that stimulated journalists to frame their stories around predictive models and forecasts aiming to predict the future trend of the pandemic. This article examines the audience response to predictive journalism by qualitatively analyzing readers’ comments to articles covering COVID that were published in a small sample of mainstream media. Based on a thematic analysis of readers’ comments, th…
Anticipating Attention
Headlines play an important role in both news audiences' attention decisions online and in news organizations’ efforts to attract that attention. A large body of research focuses on developing generally applicable heuristics for more effective headline writing. In this work, we measure the importance of a number of theoretically motivated textual features to headline performance. Using a corpus of hundreds of thousands of headline A/B tests run b…
Curating Quality? How Twitter's Timeline Algorithm Treats Different Types of News
This article explores how Twitter's algorithmic timeline influences exposure to different types of external media. We use an agent-based testing method to compare chronological timelines and algorithmic timelines for a group of Twitter agents that emulated real-world archetypal users. We first find that algorithmic timelines exposed agents to external links at roughly half the rate of chronological timelines. Despite the reduced exposure, the pro…
Characterizing Communication Patterns between Audiences and Newsbots
News organizations are increasingly exploring how the use of newsbots can enhance journalism by enabling novel ways to disseminate news and engage with audiences in social media environments. While newsbots have begun to draw attention in journalism studies, little consideration has been given to how audiences perceive and respond to newsbots. Through the lens of human–machine communication (HMC), this article presents a case study of a newsbot i…
Anticipating and addressing the ethical implications of deepfakes in the context of elections
New media synthesis technologies are rapidly advancing and becoming more accessible, allowing users to make video and audio clips (i.e. deepfakes) of individuals doing and saying things they never did or said. Deepfakes have significant implications for the integrity of many social domains including that of elections. Focusing on the 2020 US presidential election and using an anticipatory approach, this article examines the ethical issues raised …
Automating the News
From hidden connections in big data to bots spreading fake news, journalism is increasingly computer-generated. Nicholas Diakopoulos explains the present and future of a world in which algorithms have changed how the news is created, disseminated, and received, and he shows why journalists-and their values-are at little risk of being replaced
Artificial Intelligence and Journalism
Optimizing Content with A/B Headline Testing
Audience analytics are an increasingly essential part of the modern newsroom as publishers seek to maximize the reach and commercial potential of their content. On top of a wealth of audience data collected, algorithmic approaches can then be applied with an eye towards predicting and optimizing the performance of content based on historical patterns. This work focuses specifically on content optimization practices surrounding the use of A/B head…
Towards a Design Orientation on Algorithms and Automation in News Production
This essay responds to the articles in the special issue on “Algorithms, Automation, and News” by reflecting on two thematic threads apparent in the collection: (1) the role of journalistic values in technology, and (2) the hybridization of human and machine effort in news production workflows. I argue that to make further progress in these areas journalism studies should establish a design orientation towards journalistic technology, and seek to…
Automating the News
Amid the push for self-driving cars and the roboticization of industrial economies, automation has proven one of the biggest news stories of our time. Yet the wide-scale automation of the news itself has largely escaped attention. In this lively exposé of that rapidly shifting terrain, Nicholas Diakopoulos focuses on the people who tell the stories--increasingly with the help of computer algorithms that are fundamentally changing the creation, di…
Algorithmic Transparency in the News Media
The growing use of difficult-to-parse algorithmic systems in the production of news, from algorithmic curation to automated writing and news bots, problematizes the normative turn toward transparency as a key tenet of journalism ethics. Pragmatic guidelines that facilitate algorithmic transparency are needed. This research presents a focus group study that engaged 50 participants across the news media and academia to discuss case studies of algor…
Accountability in algorithmic decision making
A view from computational journalism.
News Bots
So-called “robot” journalism represents a shift towards the automation of journalistic tasks related to news reporting, writing, curation, and even data analysis. In this paper, we consider the extension of robot journalism to the domain of social platforms and study the use of “news bots”—automated accounts that participate in news and information dissemination on social networks. Such bots present an intriguing development opportunity for news …
Uses of Generative AI in the Newsroom
This study delves into journalists' perspectives on the perils and possibilities of using generative AI-tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and DALL-E in the newsroom. Semi-structured interviews with journalists from The Netherlands, and Denmark, who self-identify as early adopters of generative AI-tools, were conducted. Results reveal 16 different specific uses of generative-AI tools across the news reporting process, mostly situated in the news productio…
Anticipating and addressing the ethical implications of deepfakes in the context of elections
New media synthesis technologies are rapidly advancing and becoming more accessible, allowing users to make video and audio clips (i.e. deepfakes) of individuals doing and saying things they never did or said. Deepfakes have significant implications for the integrity of many social domains including that of elections. Focusing on the 2020 US presidential election and using an anticipatory approach, this article examines the ethical issues raised …
Towards a Design Orientation on Algorithms and Automation in News Production
This essay responds to the articles in the special issue on “Algorithms, Automation, and News” by reflecting on two thematic threads apparent in the collection: (1) the role of journalistic values in technology, and (2) the hybridization of human and machine effort in news production workflows. I argue that to make further progress in these areas journalism studies should establish a design orientation towards journalistic technology, and seek to…
Algorithmic indifference
The role of recommendation systems in news consumption has been hotly contested. From one perspective, the combination of personalized recommendations and practically limitless content diminishes news consumption, as people turn to more entertaining fare. From another, algorithmic systems and social networks heighten incidental exposure, raising opportunities for news consumption regardless of explicit individual interest. In this work, we examin…
Anticipating Attention
Headlines play an important role in both news audiences' attention decisions online and in news organizations’ efforts to attract that attention. A large body of research focuses on developing generally applicable heuristics for more effective headline writing. In this work, we measure the importance of a number of theoretically motivated textual features to headline performance. Using a corpus of hundreds of thousands of headline A/B tests run b…
Curating Quality? How Twitter's Timeline Algorithm Treats Different Types of News
This article explores how Twitter's algorithmic timeline influences exposure to different types of external media. We use an agent-based testing method to compare chronological timelines and algorithmic timelines for a group of Twitter agents that emulated real-world archetypal users. We first find that algorithmic timelines exposed agents to external links at roughly half the rate of chronological timelines. Despite the reduced exposure, the pro…
Facebook's News Feed Algorithm and the 2020 US Election
Facebook plays a substantial role in shaping exposure to news and information, a role that is particularly significant during democratic elections. This article aims to characterize Facebook's contribution to news exposure during the 2020 US election. Using internet browsing data from 1.3 million desktop panelists in the United States, we analyze audience flows from Facebook to news and information publishers ( N = 3,247 websites) labeled accordi…
Predicting Covid
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global health crisis that stimulated journalists to frame their stories around predictive models and forecasts aiming to predict the future trend of the pandemic. This article examines the audience response to predictive journalism by qualitatively analyzing readers’ comments to articles covering COVID that were published in a small sample of mainstream media. Based on a thematic analysis of readers’ comments, th…
Towards quality discourse in online news comments
With the growth in sociality and interaction around online news media, news sites are increasingly becoming places for communities to discuss and address common issues spurred by news articles. The quality of online news comments is of importance to news organizations that want to provide a valuable exchange of community ideas and maintain credibility within the community. In this work we examine the complex interplay between the needs and desire…
Algorithmic Accountability
Every day automated algorithms make decisions that can amplify the power of businesses and governments. Yet as algorithms come to regulate more aspects of our lives, the contours of their power can remain difficult to grasp. This paper studies the notion of algorithmic accountability reporting as a mechanism for elucidating and articulating the power structures, biases, and influences that computational artifacts exercise in society. A framework …
Structure and Content of the Discourse on Climate Change in the Blogosphere
Based on the texts of 1.3 million blog posts and the structure of the links between the blogs in which these posts appeared, this study presents an analysis of the discourse on climate change in the English-language blogosphere. Our approach combines community detection with probabilistic topic modeling to show how topics related to climate change are discussed across various parts of the blogosphere. We find that there is one community of predom…
Accountability in algorithmic decision making
A view from computational journalism.
News Bots
So-called “robot” journalism represents a shift towards the automation of journalistic tasks related to news reporting, writing, curation, and even data analysis. In this paper, we consider the extension of robot journalism to the domain of social platforms and study the use of “news bots”—automated accounts that participate in news and information dissemination on social networks. Such bots present an intriguing development opportunity for news …
Algorithmic Transparency in the News Media
The growing use of difficult-to-parse algorithmic systems in the production of news, from algorithmic curation to automated writing and news bots, problematizes the normative turn toward transparency as a key tenet of journalism ethics. Pragmatic guidelines that facilitate algorithmic transparency are needed. This research presents a focus group study that engaged 50 participants across the news media and academia to discuss case studies of algor…
Automating the News
From hidden connections in big data to bots spreading fake news, journalism is increasingly computer-generated. Nicholas Diakopoulos explains the present and future of a world in which algorithms have changed how the news is created, disseminated, and received, and he shows why journalists-and their values-are at little risk of being replaced
Artificial Intelligence and Journalism
Optimizing Content with A/B Headline Testing
Audience analytics are an increasingly essential part of the modern newsroom as publishers seek to maximize the reach and commercial potential of their content. On top of a wealth of audience data collected, algorithmic approaches can then be applied with an eye towards predicting and optimizing the performance of content based on historical patterns. This work focuses specifically on content optimization practices surrounding the use of A/B head…
Towards a Design Orientation on Algorithms and Automation in News Production
This essay responds to the articles in the special issue on “Algorithms, Automation, and News” by reflecting on two thematic threads apparent in the collection: (1) the role of journalistic values in technology, and (2) the hybridization of human and machine effort in news production workflows. I argue that to make further progress in these areas journalism studies should establish a design orientation towards journalistic technology, and seek to…
Automating the News
Amid the push for self-driving cars and the roboticization of industrial economies, automation has proven one of the biggest news stories of our time. Yet the wide-scale automation of the news itself has largely escaped attention. In this lively exposé of that rapidly shifting terrain, Nicholas Diakopoulos focuses on the people who tell the stories--increasingly with the help of computer algorithms that are fundamentally changing the creation, di…
Characterizing Communication Patterns between Audiences and Newsbots
News organizations are increasingly exploring how the use of newsbots can enhance journalism by enabling novel ways to disseminate news and engage with audiences in social media environments. While newsbots have begun to draw attention in journalism studies, little consideration has been given to how audiences perceive and respond to newsbots. Through the lens of human–machine communication (HMC), this article presents a case study of a newsbot i…
Anticipating and addressing the ethical implications of deepfakes in the context of elections
New media synthesis technologies are rapidly advancing and becoming more accessible, allowing users to make video and audio clips (i.e. deepfakes) of individuals doing and saying things they never did or said. Deepfakes have significant implications for the integrity of many social domains including that of elections. Focusing on the 2020 US presidential election and using an anticipatory approach, this article examines the ethical issues raised …
Anticipating Attention
Headlines play an important role in both news audiences' attention decisions online and in news organizations’ efforts to attract that attention. A large body of research focuses on developing generally applicable heuristics for more effective headline writing. In this work, we measure the importance of a number of theoretically motivated textual features to headline performance. Using a corpus of hundreds of thousands of headline A/B tests run b…
Curating Quality? How Twitter's Timeline Algorithm Treats Different Types of News
This article explores how Twitter's algorithmic timeline influences exposure to different types of external media. We use an agent-based testing method to compare chronological timelines and algorithmic timelines for a group of Twitter agents that emulated real-world archetypal users. We first find that algorithmic timelines exposed agents to external links at roughly half the rate of chronological timelines. Despite the reduced exposure, the pro…
Countering Algorithmic Bias and Disinformation and Effectively Harnessing the Power of AI in Media
Artificial intelligence (AI) is affecting the daily lives of billions of media users Algorithms are popular and effective tools utilized by companies online, but their popularity comes at the expense of systematic discrimination, limited transparency, and vague accountability Algorithmic filtering procedures may lead to more impartial, and thus possibly fairer processes than those processed by humans. However, algorithmic recommendation processes…
Partisan search behavior and Google results in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections
This research shows that members of different ideological groups in the United States can use different search terms when looking for information about political candidates, but that difference is not enough to yield divergent search results on Google. Search engines are central in information seeking during elections, and have important implications for the distribution of information and, by extension, for democratic society. Using a method inv…
Predicting Covid
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global health crisis that stimulated journalists to frame their stories around predictive models and forecasts aiming to predict the future trend of the pandemic. This article examines the audience response to predictive journalism by qualitatively analyzing readers’ comments to articles covering COVID that were published in a small sample of mainstream media. Based on a thematic analysis of readers’ comments, th…
ChatGPT and the AI Act
It is not easy being a tech regulator these days. The European institutions are working hard towards finalising the AI Act in autumn, and then generative AI systems like ChatGPT come along! In this essay, we comment the European AI Act by arguing that its current risk-based approach is too limited for facing ChatGPT & co
The European AI Act and How It Matters for Research into AI in Media and Journalism
The protection of fundamental rights, and the human-centric, ethical and responsible use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in general is a central ambition of the European AI strategy, with no lesser goal than “spearhead[ing] the development of new ambitious global norms” (European Commission 2021). Like the General Data Protection Regulation before it, the draft AI Act can be expected to set a new tone for the debate around ‘responsib…
The Future of Design + Journalism
In this introduction to the special issue Design + Journalism, we present a manifesto about the future of design and journalism. This manifesto discusses the key areas that need attention in order to develop a more robust bridge between design and journalism. The manifesto is structured by the following three notions: (1) Recognizing design contributions in the field; (2) Integrating design into digital journalism studies through cultural shift; …
Algorithmic indifference
The role of recommendation systems in news consumption has been hotly contested. From one perspective, the combination of personalized recommendations and practically limitless content diminishes news consumption, as people turn to more entertaining fare. From another, algorithmic systems and social networks heighten incidental exposure, raising opportunities for news consumption regardless of explicit individual interest. In this work, we examin…
Facebook's News Feed Algorithm and the 2020 US Election
Facebook plays a substantial role in shaping exposure to news and information, a role that is particularly significant during democratic elections. This article aims to characterize Facebook's contribution to news exposure during the 2020 US election. Using internet browsing data from 1.3 million desktop panelists in the United States, we analyze audience flows from Facebook to news and information publishers ( N = 3,247 websites) labeled accordi…
Election predictions in the news
Political journalism often tries to predict the future, especially the outcomes of elections. This has historically been accomplished through written articles or opinion pieces. A more recent development involves the publication of data-driven predictions in online news media. These news items not only contain an estimate for the election results but also often try to visualize potential uncertainties of the prediction. However, the ways in which…
Uses of Generative AI in the Newsroom
This study delves into journalists' perspectives on the perils and possibilities of using generative AI-tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and DALL-E in the newsroom. Semi-structured interviews with journalists from The Netherlands, and Denmark, who self-identify as early adopters of generative AI-tools, were conducted. Results reveal 16 different specific uses of generative-AI tools across the news reporting process, mostly situated in the news productio…
Computer Science (21 works) · Political science (17 works) · Journalism (13 works) · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI (11 works) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Media studies (8 works) · Internet privacy (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Public relations (7 works)