Robots in Brazilian Journalistic Organizations: Two Case Studies

Abstract

Several journalistic organizations in Brazil use robots on social media or messaging applications. Fátima, for example, is a robot who works on WhatsApp and belongs to the Aos Fatos agency. Elas no Congresso is a robot that operates on Twitter and belongs to Revista AzMina, an independent journalism magazine focused on gender. Therefore, this article has the general objective of carrying out a preliminary study on the use of robots in journalism, focusing on Fátima and Elas no Congresso, which are two robots that belong to Brazilian journalistic organizations. And as specific objectives: a) Describe the robots’ profiles; b) Highlight the types of content published on the profiles and c) Understand whether or not journalists are visible in the content. As a method to achieve the objectives of this article, we chose the case study (Yin, 2001; Gil, 2008). As main results, we found reflections on how, throughout history, journalistic organizations began to use robots in their processes and practices.