Abstract
Artificial newscasters are increasingly replacing human anchors in broadcast media, yet their effects on viewers’ attention and emotional processing remain poorly understood. Using a controlled experiment with secondary task reaction time (STRT) and affective evaluations, this study revealed a dynamic attentional shift: Relative to the human newscaster, the artificial newscaster sustained greater attention to news watching after an initial diverting away from it. In addition, they blunted emotional reactions to unpleasant news, while ratings for neutral news and arousal remained unaffected. This dissociation, where artificial agents sustained attention but dampened emotional experience, advances the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm by demonstrating boundary conditions for the Media Equation hypothesis. Practical and ethical implications are discussed, including tradeoffs between engagement and emotional resonance.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 9526-9545 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 12 |
| Early online date | Nov 11 2025 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2026 |
Keywords
- AI newscasters
- Artificial newscasters
- automated journalism
- human–computer interaction
- information processing
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Human Factors and Ergonomics
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Computer Science Applications
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