Can AI Become Walter Cronkite? Testing the Machine Heuristic, the Hostile Media Effect, and Political News Written by Artificial Intelligence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22010609 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joo-Wha Hong (0000-0002-6555-3074, Sungkyunkwan University, corresponding author), Ho-Chun Herbert Chang (0000-0002-0056-2527, Dartmouth College), David Tewksbury (0000-0003-0606-9108, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 845-868 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-21 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Digital Journalism (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2167-0811 • E-ISSN: 2167-082X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/21670811.2024.2323000 |
| OpenAlex | W4393067364 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 15 |
| References cited | 66 |
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) in news writing are ushering in significant changes in journalism. This study examined how the nature of a story’s author (human or news bot journalist) affects how audiences assess a news story and its writer. Applying a Relative Hostile Media perspective, an experiment examined the effect of the ideological distance between news outlets and audiences. Results reveal that people express more positive attitudes—and trust—toward human journalists than toward AI journalists, but they perceive the latter as less biased. Also, story and outlet credibility have a negative relationship with ideological distance from outlets
Heuristic · Political machine · Political science · Politics · Computer Science · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Artificial Intelligence
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A Robot Wrote This?
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Predicting AI News Credibility
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Social Media as Information Source
Automated Media
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Computers that care
The hostile media phenomenon
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Video News Releases and the Public
Influence of Story Structure on Perceived Story Bias and News Organization Credibility
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Automation, Journalism, and Human–Machine Communication
The Robotic Reporter
When algorithms meet journalism
Hard news, soft news, ‘general’ news
Readers’ perception of computer-generated news
Hostile Media Perceptions
Heuristic Versus Systematic Processing of Specialist Versus Generalist Sources in Online Media
Objectivity as Strategic Ritual
| Unique citing works | 15 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 7,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 12 |