The Human Likeness of Government Chatbots – An Empirical Study from Norwegian Municipalities

While chatbots represent a potentially useful supplement to government information and service provision, transparency requirements imply the need to make sure that this technology is not confused with human support. However, there is a knowledge gap concerning whether and how government chatbots indeed represent a risk of such confusion, in spite of their resemblance with human conversation. To address this gap, we have conducted a study of a Norwegian municipality chatbot including interviews with 16 chatbot users and 18 municipality representatives, as well as analysis of > 2600 citizen dialogues. Interviews with citizen and municipality representatives suggested that citizens typically understood well the chatbot capabilities and limitations, though municipality representatives reported on some examples of humanizing the chatbot in its early phases of deployment. Dialogue analyses indicated that citizens have a markedly utilitarian style in their communication with the chatbot, suggesting limited anthropomorphizing of the chatbot.acceptedVersio

Crises, Rumours and Reposts: Journalists’ Social Media Content Gathering and Verification Practices in Breaking News Situations

Social media (SoMe) platforms provide potentially important information for news journalists during everyday work and in crisis-related contexts. The aims of this study were (a) to map central journalistic challenges and emerging practices related to using SoMe for collecting and validating newsworthy content; and (b) to investigate how practices may contribute to a user-friendly design of a web-based SoMe content validation toolset. Interviews were carried out with 22 journalists from three European countries. Information about journalistic work tasks was also collected during a crisis training scenario (N = 5). Results showed that participants experienced challenges with filtering and estimating trustworthiness of SoMe content. These challenges were especially due to the vast overall amount of information, and the need to monitor several platforms simultaneously. To support improved situational awareness in journalistic work during crises, a user-friendly tool should provide content search results representing several media formats and gathered from a diversity of platforms, presented in easy-to-approach visualizations. The final decision-making about content and source trustworthiness should, however, remain as a manual journalistic task, as the sample would not trust an automated estimation based on tool algorithms.Peer reviewe

Boundaries of legitimate debate: Right-wing extremism in Norwegian news media in the decade after the July 22, 2011 attacks

How to deal with voices deemed deviant and extremist is a recurring topic of debate, including questions such as whether deviant actors and ideas should be silenced or included in public debates. As with terrorist attacks in other parts of the world, the attacks in Norway on July 22, 2011 ignited discussions on the limits of legitimate debate, including the role of mainstream politicians and news media in setting the boundaries for what is appropriate in public debates. This article explores news debates on right-wing extremism in the decade after the attack, shedding light on how boundaries between legitimacy and deviance were drawn and negotiated. Analyzing articles on right-wing extremism in two national news outlets in Norway (NRK and VG) between 2013 and 2019, the author explores who got to speak and define the debate, to what extent actors deemed extremist were granted a voice, and how boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate political actors were negotiated. First, the analyses show that although the coverage was dominated by elites, actors deemed extremist were relatively prominent sources. Second, political and cultural elites engaged in continuous negotiations over the boundaries of legitimate and appropriate debate. However, third and relatedly, the analysis illustrates that debates concerning possible links between the views of legitimate elite actors—such as politicians in parliament—and deviant extremists were challenging to initiate

Prinsipper og person i dekningen av asyl

Denne oppgaven har som formål å belyse hvorvidt nyhetsdekningen av asylsaker der enkeltpersoner står i sentrum gir rom for synspunkter på et mer overgripende politisk og prinsipielt nivå. Oppgaven belyser hvordan NOAS og Papirløsekampanjen på den ene siden, og Regjeringen på den andre argumenterer rundt lengeværende asylsøkere, og undersøker i hvilken grad deres synspunkter og argumenter kom gjennom i to nyhetssaker om lengeværende asylsøkere. Analysen viser hvordan de to partene har diametralt ulike forståelser av tematikken. NOAS og Papirløsekampanjen vektlegger den vanskelige livssituasjonen lengeværende asylsøkere befinner, og foreslår løsninger som vil gjøre at gruppen av personer kan få opphold i Norge. Regjeringen vektlegger at personene det er snakk om oppholder seg ulovlig i Norge, og foreslår løsninger som vil gjøre at flere returnerer til hjemlandet og at færre asylsøkere uten behov for beskyttelse kommer til Norge. Både NOAS og Papirløsekampanjen på den ene siden, og Regjeringen på den andre lyktes til en viss grad i å nå gjennom med disse synspunktene i nyhetsdekningen av de to sakene. Samtidig viser analysen at mediene i stor grad fokuserte på de involverte personene, deres følelser og deres privatliv, og at noe av dette fokuset overskygget for et mer overgripende sakfokus

Metajournalism and media critique: Responses to "Extremist Voices" in the Digitalized News Landscape

Metadebates concerning how the news media deal with extremism have intensified in the digital media landscape. This article analyzes metajournalistic discourse following a controversial studio interview with the spokesperson of a Norwegian Salafi-jihadist group. To illuminate how boundaries of appropriate public debate are negotiated, the article analyzes how this journalistic performance was debated among journalists and commentators, news sources, and readers in online comments sections. The study demonstrates how editorial legacy media invite a broad metadebate but control and define the debate by positioning themselves as defenders against extremism, evoking normative ideals of the role of journalism in democracy and foregrounding the preventive, clarifying, and cohesive effects of including extremist voices. News sources and online commenters are notably more critical, emphasizing the negative consequences of inclusion and warning that inclusion may serve to consolidate extremist views, amplify threats and prejudice, and make extremists the symbolic representatives of Muslims in general. Theoretically, the article contributes to the literature on media and extremism, media criticism, and mediated negotiations of the boundaries of public debate

Metajournalism and media critique: Responses to "Extremist Voices" in the Digitalized News Landscape

Metadebates concerning how the news media deal with extremism have intensified in the digital media landscape. This article analyzes metajournalistic discourse following a controversial studio interview with the spokesperson of a Norwegian Salafi-jihadist group. To illuminate how boundaries of appropriate public debate are negotiated, the article analyzes how this journalistic performance was debated among journalists and commentators, news sources, and readers in online comments sections. The study demonstrates how editorial legacy media invite a broad metadebate but control and define the debate by positioning themselves as defenders against extremism, evoking normative ideals of the role of journalism in democracy and foregrounding the preventive, clarifying, and cohesive effects of including extremist voices. News sources and online commenters are notably more critical, emphasizing the negative consequences of inclusion and warning that inclusion may serve to consolidate extremist views, amplify threats and prejudice, and make extremists the symbolic representatives of Muslims in general. Theoretically, the article contributes to the literature on media and extremism, media criticism, and mediated negotiations of the boundaries of public debate

Når saken tas i mediene: mediedramaturgi og handlingsrom i lokale helsekonflikter

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Lokal helse og omsorg i mediene: Mediepåvirkning på nært hold

Denne rapporten belyser hvordan medienes vinklinger og formater påvirker lokal helsedebatt og helsepolitikk. Den diskuterer særlig hvordan ulike kilder og strategiske aktører aktivt søker å prege mediedekningen for å endre beslutninger i enkeltsaker og overordnede prioriteringer i kommunale helse- og omsorgstjenester. Gjennom dybdeanalyser av tre caser som alle omhandler kommunale helse- og omsorgstilbud, viser vi hvordan medieoppslag med lokalt utgangspunkt setter dagsorden for lokale helsemyndigheter, men også løftes opp på den nasjonale politiske dagsorden.publishedVersio

What does digital journalism studies look like?

This article analyses the characteristics of digital journalism studies through an empirical investigation of all articles published in the journal Digital Journalism, from its launch in 2013 to issue 6, 2018. The aim of the analysis is to identify dominant themes and degrees of diversity and interdisciplinary in digital journalism studies, and to identify biases and blind spots. The article is based on analysis of keywords, abstracts and references used in all articles published in the journal. The findings suggest that while the research published in Digital Journalism is firmly situated within journalism studies, it has a stronger emphasis on technology, platforms, audience and the present. The article also finds that digital journalism studies, as seen in Digital Journalism, is dominated by perspectives from the social sciences, while largely ignoring digital journalism as a meaning-making system, and that the field of research could benefit from the application of theories and perspectives from the humanities and to some extent from theoretical computer science and informatics. Finally, the article argues that digital journalism studies suffers from a lack of connections between empirical research and the many conceptual discussions that dominate the (sub)field