Botlitica: A generative AI-based tool to assist journalists in navigating political propaganda campaigns

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24434/j.scoms.2024.01.4270

Keywords:

disinformation, generative AI, political communication, human computer interaction, fact-checking

Abstract

The hype on generative AI has raised concerns about the spread of disinformation but also opened up new opportunities for hybrid journalism. The proliferation of political propaganda campaigns spread across digital media during election periods constitutes a challenge for journalists who struggle to exercise information gatekeeping. AI-based tools can in principle help, but journalists are resistant to using them since they are sceptical about their compliance with news values and their scarce user-friendliness. To cope with such issues, we present Botlitica, a GPT3-based chatbot able to answer users’ questions according to the information shared on different social media by a given political party which is, thus, embodied by the AI agent in the conversation. The back-end and front-design of the chatbot are devised to privilege transparency. We report the results of a preliminary evaluation of Botlitica which show that the tool fastens journalists’ capabilities to navigate propaganda campaigns inducing them to exercise critical thinking.

Downloads

Published

2024-05-08

Issue

Vol. 24 No. 1: Studies in Communication Sciences

Section

Community

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Elena Musi, Edgar Everardo Garcia Aguilar, Lorenzo Federico

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The electronic contributions in the Internet are distributed under the "Creative Commons Attribution – ShareAlike" - License (CC BY-SA 4.0). Under the new license, anyone can use, distribute, and modify the content if they credit the original author and share any new creations under the same or compatible conditions. Here are the key features of the CC-BY-SA license:

  • CC (Creative Commons): A globally recognized framework for licensing creative works.
  • BY (Attribution): Requires acknowledgment of the author whenever the work is used.
  • SA (ShareAlike): Ensures that adaptations of the work are distributed under the same or compatible licensing terms.

How to Cite

Musi, E., Garcia Aguilar, E. E., & Federico , L. (2024). Botlitica: A generative AI-based tool to assist journalists in navigating political propaganda campaigns. Studies in Communication Sciences, 24(1), 161–169. https://doi.org/10.24434/j.scoms.2024.01.4270