Designing Immersive Audio Experiences for News and Information in the Internet of Things using Text-to-Speech Objects

Abstract

The use of personal Internet-enabled objects is on the rise. The use of voice interactions and audio-based delivery of content are the preferred approach for these screen-less objects. In terms of the news industry, Text-To-Speech (TTS) is an obvious choice for repurposing readily available written articles of text for such platforms. Currently through flash briefing skills on services such as Amazon Echo, news publishers are seeking innovative new ways to distribute their content to new audiences. This paper continues the research of NewsThings and uses one of its prototypes, RadioThing, to evidence the problems that are currently present in TTS, how these challenges affect publishers and outlines seven recommendations when designing TTS objects for news and information content. These recommendations are suggested to improve the authenticity, immersion and production of audio-based journalism. Consequently, prompting the use of TTS as a viable form of media for local and regional news organisations.

Voice search optimization in digital media: challenges, use and training

“…Research on voice search technology and digital media published to date has highlighted the need to -work on adapting content to voice interfaces (Fagundes-Pase et al, 2020); -adopt agreements between digital news media outlets and voice assistant developers to work towards updating the provision of these new ways of summarising news (Kischinhevsky, 2019); -be aware of the types of news searches performed by virtual assistants (Jung et al, 2019); -consider how news consumption could shape the news agenda (Turow, 2021); and -promote the use of technologies that allow news to be read aloud for playback by virtual assistants (Lochrie et al, 2018).…”

“…In the case of voice searches, i.e., queries spoken to a virtual assistant that then returns a result, there are a number of academic studies published in the social sciences (Sa, 2016;Shokouhi;Ozertem;Craswell, 2016;Mairesse;Raccuglia;Vitaladevuni, 2016;Hurwitz et al, 2017;Guy, 2018;Lovato;Piper, 2019), several of which include a consideration of journalism (Lochrie et al, 2018;Kischinhevsky, 2019;Jung et al, 2019;Fagundes-Pase et al, 2020;Turow, 2021) but not of visibility, that is, not of voice search optimisation (hereafter VSO). There have also been numerous industry reports and news stories published on the use of voice search technology, both at a general level (Huffman, 2014;Cachón, 2019;Isidigitaldata, 2020;Rabit and Pork, 2021) and in the context of digital media (Newman, 2018).…”

NewsPod: Automatic and Interactive News Podcasts

“…Lochrie et al [39] manually built prototypes of news podcasts and performed an evaluation, which they used to propose seven recommendations for automating news podcasts. NewsPod follows four of these recommendations, namely: (1) the content should be adapted to the audio format with bite-size chunks of information (in NewsPod: questions and answers), (2) summarize key points, (3) leverage several specialized voices, (4) adapt the narrative style to the context.…”