Automated journalism in news about traffic accidents: emergency services information dump

In this work, the process of producing news about events in the Spanish digital press has been studied. A content analysis was carried out on news related to the main external causes of mortality (traffic accidents, accidental falls, drowning and suicides) published in the six main Spanish digital media (elpais.com, elmundo.es, abc.es, lavanguardia.com, elconfidencial.com and 20minutos.es) during the period 2010-2020. The selected news items (n = 5,727) were obtained through the digital newspaper library Mynewsonline. A qualitative study has also been carried out (in-depth interviews with professionals and a focus group). The results show a high number of news items published on traffic compared to other external causes of death with higher mortality. It is also appreciated that the media automatically transfer the information they receive from the emergency services. It has even been detected that most of the news events coded in this study are exact copies that are published on the same day in different media (headlines and the body of the news).