Bots in journalism: discursive patterns of news created by Artificial Intelligence and news written by humans
Abstract
Sports journalism is increasingly employing artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the generation of notes in events of great coverage. However, it is necessary to recognize that there are discursive differences between the news written by AI and those written by humans. The objective of this work was to identify discursive patterns in the tweets generated by the artificial intelligence called OlyBot and by sports journalists in the Olympic Games of Rio de Janeiro 2016 and Pyeongchang 2018. Gunning's fog index was applied to analyze a sample of 30 tweets issued by the automated system and 30 tweets issued by journalists, in each event. The results indicate that the wording of this AI is simple and concise, as it uses only one sentence per tweet. The parts of speech found were: nouns, verbs, and adjectives. In Rio de Janeiro 2016, both journalists (10.54) and bot (10.44) issued notes that can be read without difficulty, according to the Gunning Fog Index. The most relevant result was found in the readability analysis of the notes issued in Pyeongchang 2018, where journalists reached a value of 14.63 against OlyBot's 10.8, indicating, according to the model used, that these are difficult-to-read texts, which are not for popular consumption. With the increase in words, the artificial intelligence bot maintained its readability level in both events, while the journalist increased the complexity of his notes, making them more unintelligible. The implications of these reflections are of interest to technologists, journalists, and linguists, as well as to society in general since they present the challenge of discerning and assessing those texts that can currently be created by automatons or by journalists, without undermining their readability.
Downloads
References
AcademiaLab. (2025). Charles F. Hockett. Enciclopedia. https://academia-lab.com/enciclopedia/charles-f-hockett/
Alcaraz Varó, E., & Martínez Linares, M. A. (2004). Diccionario de lingüística moderna. Editorial Ariel.
Ali, W., & Hassoun, M. (2019). Artificial Intelligence and Automated Journalism: Contemporary Challenges and New Opportunities. International Journal of Media, Journalism and Mass Communications, 5(1), 40–49. https://doi.org/10.20431/2454-9479.0501004
Bullido, A. (2019). #54 El auge de los bots en periodismo: ¿oportunidad o peligro? Escuela de Periodismo. https://open.spotify.com/episode/3WHna8IiNHulL7nMkHIZWV
Canavilhas, J., & Giacomelli, F. (2023). Artificial Intelligence in sports journalism: a study in Brazil and Portugal. Revista de Comunicacion, 22(1), 53–69. https://doi.org/10.26441/RC22.1-2023-3005
Canavilhas, J. (2022). Artificial Intelligence and Journalism: Current Situation and Expectations in the Portuguese Sports Media. Journalism and Media, 3(3), 510–520. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia3030035
Deslongchamps, A. (2018). Readability and the Bank of Canada. Bank of Canada. https://www.banqueducanada.ca/2018/06/note-analytique-personnel-2018-20/
Enríquez Salas, P., & Argota Pérez, G. (2016). Descripción interpretativa para la elaboración del perfil de tesis de investigación científica con enfoque cualimétrico (mixto). Campus, 21(22), 151–164. https://doi.org/10.24265/campus.2016.v21n22.02
Fırat, F. (2019). Robot Journalism. The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies, October, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118841570.iejs0243
Franganillo, J. (2023). La inteligencia artificial generativa y su impacto en la creación de contenidos mediáticos. Methaodos Revista De Ciencias Sociales, 11(2), m231102a10. https://doi.org/10.17502/mrcs.v11i2.710
Gunning, R. (1968). The technique of clear writing. In 1952. https://dokumen.pub/qdownload/the-technique-of-clear-writing-1nbsped-9780070252066.html
Hockett. (1982). Hockett, Charles F. (1960) The Origin of Speech. Scientific American, 1960, 4–12. https://web.stanford.edu/class/linguist197a/hockett60sciam.pdf
Köbis, N., & Mossink, L. D. (2021). Artificial intelligence versus Maya Angelou: Experimental evidence that people cannot differentiate AI-generated from human-written poetry. Computers in Human Behavior, 114(106553), 1–13. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106553
Lamorte, J. M. (2023). Bots, las herramientas omnipresentes en la era digital actual. Next Work 360. https://www.itmastersmag.com/inteligencia-artificial/bots-las-herramientas-omnipresentes-en-la-era-digital-actual/
Latar, N. (2018). Robot Journalism: Can Human Journalism Survive? World Scientific Publishing. https://www.academia.edu/77507591/Robot_Journalism_Can_Human_Journalism_Survive
Lenzner, T. (2014). Are Readability Formulas Valid Tools for Assessing Survey Question Difficulty? Sociological Methods and Research, 43(4), 677–698. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124113513436
López Gallego, J. (2021). Los bots y el nuevo periodismo automatizado. Aula En Red Acción. https://blogotomia.com/aulaenred-accion/los-bots-el-nuevo-periodismo-automatizado/
Marcovich, D. (2022). La Historia de los Chatbots. AutomatiChat. https://automatichat.com/blog/la-historia-de-los-chatbots
Martini, S. (2000). Periodismo, noticia y noticiabilidad. Editorial Norma.
Ovares Barquero, F. (2010). Variación del índice de niebla usando un corpus obtenido a partir de los libros digitalizados por google. Uniciencia, 24, 133–141.
Pentel, A. (2015). A Comparison of Different Feature Sets for Age-Based Classification of Short Texts. 6th International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications (IISA). https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7388069
Peña-Fernández, S., Meso-Ayerdi, K., Larrondo-Ureta, A., & Díaz-Noci, J. (2023). Without journalists, there is no journalism: the social dimension of generative artificial intelligence in the media. Profesional de La Información, 32(2), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.3145/epi.2023.mar.27
Pymediar. (2023). Twitter y su historia: cómo se convirtió en X. Pymediar.Com/Blog. https://www.pymediar.com/twitter-y-su-historia-como-se-convirtio-en-x/#:~:text=
Ragins, B. (2012). Editor’s comments : Reflections on the Craft. Academy of Management Review, 37(4), 493–501.
Scott, B. (2025). The Gunning Fog Index (or FOG) Readability Formula. Readability Formulas. https://readabilityformulas.com/the-gunnings-fog-index-or-fog-readability-formula/
Silva, A. (2018). Mejora tu SEO: Qué es y cómo se calcula el índice de niebla de Gunning-Fog. PWS. https://www.posicionamiento-web-salamanca.com/blog/seo/mejora-seo-calcula-indice-niebla/
Sujatna, E. T. S., Heriyanto, H., & Andri, S. (2021). Lexical density and variation in Indonesian folklores in English student textbooks: an SFL study. Leksika: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra Dan Pengajarannya, 15(2), 62. https://doi.org/10.30595/lks.v15i2.11102
Túñez-López, M., Toural-Bran, C., & Valdiviezo-Abad, C. (2019). Automatización, bots y algoritmos en la redacción de noticias. Impacto y calidad del periodismo artificial. RLCS, Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 74, 1411–1433. https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS
Ufarte Ruiz, M. J., & Manfredi Sánchez, J. L. (2019). Algorithms and bots applied to journalism. The case of Narrativa Inteligencia Artificial: Structure, production and informative quality. Doxa Comunicacion, 2019(29), 213–233. https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n29a11
UNESCO. (2023). UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. Unesco. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000385082.page=4
Villarreal, M. (2017). El impacto de la IA y la automatización sobre las noticias. Medialab. https://medialab.press/impacto-la-ia-la-automatizacion-las-noticias/
Copyright (c) 2025 Victoria Daniela Rodríguez-Flores, David Picazo, Claudia Patricia Contreras
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The authors who publish in this journal agree with the following terms:
a. The authors retain the copyright and guarantee the magazine the right to be the first publication of the work as well as a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the authorship of the work and the initial publication in this magazine.
b. Authors may separately establish additional agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in the journal (for example, place it in an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are allowed and encouraged to disseminate their work electronically (for example, in institutional repositories or on their own website) before and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as a more early and major published papers (See The Effect of Open Access).
| 
| 
