NewsShift has a plan: they want everyone to be able to read their news in the style they want - without the truth content being affected. To achieve this, the start-up has developed its own app.
We've all been there: the topic of an article is interesting, but the text is too long and too complex. The result: put it down or click on. The start-up NewsShift wants to change that: The start-up collects news articles from various sources and prepares them in such a way that readers can regulate the style in which they want to read the article themselves.
The NewsShift team consists of international researchers from the fields of economics, media economics and behavioral sciences who have already worked together on many research projects and some of whom have known each other for several years. These include: Fabian Roeben, Christopher Roth, Felix Chopra, Ingar Haaland and Vanessa Sticher.
As part of a field experiment, they worked together on a project to investigate how people react when they can control the language style of their messages themselves. This included parameters such as complexity, political perspective, entertainment value, opinion content and negativity.
Roeben, who himself works at the University of Cologne , clarifies: "It wasn't about filter settings, but about the language and style of the articles themselves." Numerous positive responses and the realization that the settings options increase the satisfaction of news consumption without negatively influencing news knowledge encouraged the team to found the company.
The idea for NewsShift was born. The goal?"We want to offer a news app that, with the help of AI, allows users to decide for themselves how and in what style they want to read the news," says Roeben.
Here you can find more information about the start-up incubator Media Lift.
To the program
NewsShift is an AI-powered news app that allows users to customize articles in real time according to their preferences. Content can be simplified, made more neutral or more entertaining without changing the facts.
The product that NewsShift offers its customers is an app. It works in exactly the same way as any other conventional news app - i.e. it has a feed that users can scroll through and access individual articles. The only difference is that users can use various sliders to regulate the style of the articles and ensure that they are more entertaining, less complex or less negatively worded.
To make this possible, the company first brings all articles to a neutral basic level. This version forms the basis for the respective editing. The articles can then be adapted to a variety of article styles - generated by an AI system.
Through this procedure, the start-up ensures that the core statements are consistent in all versions and sources. This is crucial as it guarantees accuracy and ensures that no important information is lost.
The editorial system checks all articles, revises them and highlights content that requires manual review. Articles that pass this quality check are then approved for reading and published.
What happens next? Next year, NewsShift wants to open up further markets and launch the app in America.
