Vietnamese Online Journalism: VnExpress and VietnamPlus’ Responses to the Big Data and AI Boom

This research provides an insight of VnExpress and VietnamPlus online newsrooms’ innovative approaches in applying Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) technology to journalism. Research findings are based on two sets of data. The first was collected from in-depth interviews (from May to August 2019) with key informants of each case study, who were directly involved in each newsroom’s projects. The second consisted of relevant material published on media or supplied by interviewees. These kinds of data addressed various sources, providing vital preparation for the interviews. (1) For VnExpress: the media outlet developed three optimal features integrated into the technical system to bring the best experiences to users and editorial staff from 2017. These included the recommendation system, personalisation, and application performance monitoring. VnExpress also used Comment Autobot to filter readers’ comments on the news site automatically. Developing an automated publishing function for the content management system (CMS) is the newsroom’s latest strategy. (2) For VietnamPlus: In November 2018, it became the first official news organisation in Vietnam using Chatbot to connect with readers. The author interviewed the editor-in-chief and projects’ technical members to investigate the concept of innovative products in journalism and some emerging issues during the implementation process.