Developing IQJournalism: An Intelligent Advisor for Predicting the Perceived Quality in Greek News Articles

Technological developments and the integration of social media into journalistic practices have transformed the media landscape, changing the processes of information gathering, production and dissemination. This evolution poses challenges, including the lack of clear guidelines and tools for producing quality online news. To address these issues, IQJournalism, an intelligent quality prediction advisor, was developed. This paper outlines the methodology for the development of IQJournalism, a platform that leverages advanced AI technologies to process Greek news articles and provide real-time editing recommendations on various aspects, including language quality, subjectivity level, emotionality, entertainment, and social media engagement. First, a qualitative study was conducted through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 20 experts, academic researchers and media professionals to identify indicators of perceived quality in journalism. These insights were then transformed into measurable features, which served as training data for explainable machine learning-based models for quality categorization and prediction. Finally, the IQJournalism platform was designed following a user-centered iterative process that included prototyping, testing and redesigning. The innovative approach aims to serve as a valuable tool for improving journalistic quality, contributing to more reliable and engaging online news content.