Abstract

Datafication disrupts journalistic processes and intensifies economic challenges for the journalism industry. The increasing use of vast amounts of sensor data in journalism makes journalistic processes opaque, thereby decreasing the visibility of human involvement within the inherent sensor-based processes, such as sensor data collection or analysis. While consumers are averse towards opaque data-based products, process transparency gained growing research interest to increase consumer appreciation by enhancing sensemaking. Previous research investigating physical product appreciation finds that particularly the visibility of human work implied in the production processes increases consumer appreciation. For sensor-based contexts, current research still lacks insights into the impact of seeing human involvement in sensor-based processes. To address this gap, we use sensor-based journalism as research context and draw on the literature on process transparency and social translucence. Hence, in this research-in-progress paper, we hypothesize the impact of seeing human involvement in sensor-based processes on reader appreciation for sensor-based articles. We propose a research model and suggest forthcoming research steps to test the model by conducting an online experiment among more than 200 participants based in Germany.

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