Online news outlets are grappling with the moderation of user-generated content within their comment section. We present a recommender system based on ranking class probabilities to support and empower the moderator in choosing featured posts, a time-consuming task. By combining user and textual content features we obtain an optimal classification F1-score of 0.44 on the test set. Furthermore, we observe an optimum mean NDCG@5 of 0.87 on a large set of validation articles. As an expert evaluation, content moderators assessed the output of a random selection of articles by choosing comments to feature based on the recommendations, which resulted in a NDCG score of 0.83. We conclude that first, adding text features yields the best score and second, while choosing featured content remains somewhat subjective, content moderators found suitable comments in all but one evaluated recommendations. We end the paper by analyzing our best-performing model, a step towards transparency and explainability in hybrid content moderation.

From hidden connections in big data to bots spreading fake news, journalism is increasingly computer-generated. An expert in computer science and media explains the present and future of a world in which news is created by algorithm. Amid the push for self-driving cars and the roboticization of industrial economies, automation has proven one of the biggest news stories of our time. Yet the wide-scale automation of the news itself has largely escaped attention. In this lively exposé of that rapidly shifting terrain, Nicholas Diakopoulos focuses on the people who tell the stories--increasingly with the help of computer algorithms that are fundamentally changing the creation, dissemination, and reception of the news. Diakopoulos reveals how machine learning and data mining have transformed investigative journalism.

This list of readings about journalism and AI is based on research for the Polis report on AI and Journalism published in November 2018. We will update this list and welcome suggestions for further readings to: c.h.beckett@lse.ac.uk What is machine learning and why should I care? AI is going to save journalism – here's how Is AI and journalism a good mix? First in the world: Yle's smart news assistant Voitto ensures that you don't miss the news you want to read Can science writing be automated?

Artificial intelligence is already being used in some newsrooms to mine data, create algorithms and automatically generate content. Using this technology on a daily basis raises new questions for journalists. Some experts claim that we are living a transitional phase, and that we have to make a decision about the future use of this technology in the media world, especially in data journalism. The first edition of the ESMH Summer School – "AI and journalism" – raised many questions about the ethical implications of using AI technologies in journalism. After discovering how AI works and how it is being (and will be) deployed in the near future in the newsrooms, the 80 young journalists who participated in the summer school reflected upon impartiality, responsibilities and the potential limits of its use.