Journalism for voice-activated assistants and devices

Abstract

Speech was human’s first great tool for communication. By developing sounds capable of creating meaning for a group, human beings were able to exchange important information, such as threats to the group. Writing has emerged only very recently in human history: about 5,500 years ago . The opposite was true in the history of the Internet: writing came first, then sound. The big leap only arrived in the 21st century, with Apple’s launch of Siri in 2011. From then on, these voice tools gained the definition of voice assistants, as they were able to listen to, respond and perform tasks through voice command. Since then, voice assistants have become popular and easily accessible to the global population. Currently five major voice assistants are available in Western markets. The issue of platform power is likely to become increasingly important for news publishers as Google and Amazon look to provide more aggregated news services via their voice assistants.