Conversational bots used in political news from the point of view of the user’s experience: Politibot

Abstract

The production and distribution of news is changing. At the same time, the relationship between journalism and artificial intelligence systems is becoming stronger. Within this context, conversational bots have appeared, which are software applications that distribute personalised content (Al Johri et al., 2016) through social networks, online instant messaging apps, and mobile devices. This research presents a case study on the conversational political news bot known as Politibot, which is a pioneering, successful Spanish project that emerged during the 2016 election campaign. The study analyses users’ perceptions of the bot as a news and conversational tool based on their experience of use. An experimental methodology has been used in combination with other qualitative and quantitative research techniques (documentary analysis, direct observation, registration forms, as well as pre-test and post-test by means of questionnaires). The results show widespread acceptance in terms of reliability, comprehension, and the format regarding the information received from the bot, as well as its immediacy and customisation. However, the possibility of interacting with bots is still limited, which is also true of the case under study herein.