We conducted two experiments to study people’s prior expectations and actual perceptions of automated and human-written news. We found that, first, participants expected more from human-written news in terms of readability and quality; but not in terms of credibility. Second, participants’ expectations of quality were rarely met. Third, when participants saw only one article, differences in the perception of automated and human-written articles were small. However, when presented with two articles at once, participants preferred human-written news for readability but automated news for credibility. These results contest previous claims according to which expectation adjustment explains differences in perceptions of human-written and automated news.

Haim, M. & Graefe, A. (2017). Automated news: Better than expected? Digital Journalism, 5(6), 1044-1059. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1345643 (content_copy)