The interviews were conducted with Alejandro Laso, director of El Confidencial Lab, and Víctor García, editor-in-chief of the media’s Sports section. With regard to the questionnaires, they were sent to academics who specialise in innovation and new technologies in journalism from several Spanish universities. These individuals are as follows, in alphabetical order:

Lluís Codina is full professor in the Department of Communication of Pompeu Fabra University, Director of the Su-pport Unit for Quality and Teaching Innovation, and Coordinator of the Research Group on Digital Documentation and Interactive Communication. He is one of the leading figures in the field of digital journalism in a general sense, and especially in topics related to the semantic web, databases, journalistic documentation, and documentary infor-mation systems.

Miguel Carvajal Prieto is a PhD lecturer in the Department of Social and Human Sciences at Miguel Hernández Uni-versity in Elche, Director of the Master’s Degree programme in Innovation and Journalism, and one of the most renow-ned experts in the study of innovation in Spain.

Miguel Túñez López is full professor of Organisational Communication and Communication Strategies in the De-partment of Communication Sciences at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Director of the Postgraduate pro-gramme in Contemporary Communication and Information, and one of the most active researchers in the field of information automation processes.

Ramón Salaverría Aliaga is Full Professor in the Department of Journalistic Projects at the University of Navarra, Vice Dean of Research on the Communication Faculty of the University of Navarra, Sub-Director of the Centre for Internet Studies and Digital Life, and one of the most outstanding academic references in the field of cyber journalism and digital media at the national and international level.

Xosé López García, Journalism Chair of the Department of Communication Sciences at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Director of the Novos Medios Research Group, and among those researchers with the most distinguished investigative careers in the field of digital journalism in Spain.

The standard questionnaire prepared and sent to the panel of experts consisted of the following five questions:

What is your perception of the application of artificial intelligence to journalism?

Speaking of this technology, what is your opinion regarding the contribution of bots to the automatic writing of news?

To what extent can bots contribute to the broadening of sports coverage, one of the areas in which they are most wi-dely used?

To which topics and sports competitions do you think the media could best apply this technology?

To what extent do you consider this technology improvable? Could this improvement possibly be achieved by editorial intervention or through supervision by the editors to give the finishing touch to the text before its final publication?

Analysis sheet

For the content analysis of this case study, an analysis sheet was drawn up containing a total of eleven aspects in order to check the degree of repetition of the bot’s writing, or in other words, the extent to which the programming of that language is reflected, which is generated automatically on the basis of human input.