Effects of Human-GenAI Collaboration in News Production on Attitudes toward News Article and Media Trust

Tang, J., Mengqi (Maggie) Liao & Miao, G. “Effects of Human-GenAI Collaboration in News Production on Attitudes toward News Article and Media Trust,” paper to be presented at the 76th annual ICA conference, June 2026 in Cape Town, South Africa.  Abstract: Beyond authorship effect, what will happen if readers are given transparent workflow information on how human and AI collaborate in generating news? How does involving AI in ethical news creation with human oversight impact both article evaluation and media trust? To answer these questions, the study reports results from a pretest study (N = 180) and a pilot study (N = 181) from nationally representative sample from the U.S. for an experiment with a between-subject factorial design: 2 (News production process: human-AI collaboration versus human-only) × 3 (Media outlets: AP, MSNBC, and Fox News) × 2 (News genre: political versus non-political news). Results reveal that positive and negative machine heuristics can offset the effect of the human-AI collaboration condition. Ideology congruence will predict higher levels of media outlet trust. Republicans will prefer the human-AI collaboration model compared with Democrats and Independents.