Consumption of Soft and Hard News on the Večernji.hr News Website and Readers’ Interests: The Possibility of Using Artificial Intelligence in the Production of Diverse Media Content

The aim of this paper is to clarify the difference between soft and hard news and to explore consumer preferences so that newspapers can adapt their artificial intelligence (AI) tools accordingly. The work focuses on the analysis of the results from a focus group discussion held on 26 March 2024, on the reading habits among readers of the news website Večernji.hr. The analysis shows that readers are not fully aware of their reading habits, often overestimating their interest in hard news while underestimating their interest in miscellaneous entertaining content in the media commonly referred to as soft news. In order to verify their statements, a content analysis of the 50 most-read articles on that news website from 25 to 29 March 2024 was conducted, also from the perspective of hard and soft news, so that this data can be compared with the results of the focus group discussion. The analysis of article readership confirmed and further emphasized the readers’ interest in the miscellanea. These findings have been contextualized within previous experiences of using artificial intelligence in the media, which show that AI tools are highly suitable for informative genres based on service data—typically classified as hard news, and are also compatible with some types of soft news. The great interest of readers in soft news suggests that significant effort should be put in its production and that it should not be considered an unimportant supplement to hard news. Artificial intelligence tools are less suitable for creating miscellanea, but they can be helpful in analyzing trends and detecting events. In these areas collaboration between humans and machines is essential, as only a journalist can accurately understand the human dimension and social context, which is the necessary framework for producing soft news.