Cultural Differences and Algorithmic Journalism: A CrossNational Study on the Perception of Algorithm-Generated News by Recipients

The use of artificial intelligence technologies for algorithm-generated text production is one of the most controversial recent developments in journalism. Generally, studies on algorithmic journalism examine its challenges and risks for media organizations and journalists. Very few studies, however, analyse the perception of automated content by recipients. Knowing how cultural differences influence the perception of algorithm-generated news is also important, since culture has a significant impact on how information is perceived by recipients. The purpose of this study is to examine differences in recipients’ perception of automated news using Hall’s (1976) model of high-context and low-context culture. For this, semi-structured interviews with twelve participants — some from a high-context culture, Turkey, and others from a low-context culture, Austria — were conducted between September 2019 and February 2020, and analysed in a comparative perspective to explore their perceptions of news stories generated by algorithms. The results of the study confirm the existence of cultural differences in the perception of algorithm-generated news between high-context and low-context cultures with regard to journalistic quality criteria. Furthermore, it can be noted that Austrian news readers generally looked favourably upon the use of algorithms in journalism and assessed automatically generated news more positively than Turkish recipients.