The magnitude of the changes that occurred during the last 25 years of digital journalism has given way to a new communication scenario full of opportunities but also of professional and ethical challenges (Salaverría, 2019). Technology is behind many of the transformations that have taken place during this time and that have had an impact on the models of production, distribution and even consumption of information. The metamorphosis experienced, as referred to by certain authors (López-García, 2010; Vázquez-Herrero et al., 2020), has led to the current scenario: convergent, mobile and now also ubiquitous (Pavlik, 2001; Salaverría, 2015).
News media organizations are currently witnessing the introduction of a set of high- technologies in our daily lives: 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, intelligent virtual assistants, among others (López- García, 2019; Mosco, 2017). Its introduction in journalism practices has given way to what has been named as Hi-tech Journalism (Larrondo and López-García, 2020; Murcia and Ufarte, 2019; Pérez-Seijo et al., 2020; Salaverría, 2015; Ufarte et al., 2020). This label encompasses different trends that shape the "journalism that will tell the future" (López- Hidalgo, 2016, p. 255): use of drones to cover news (Fischer, 2019); VR and 360-degree video Journalism (Mabrook and Singer, 2019), also referred to as Immersive Journalism (De la Peña et al., 2010); augmented reality for news (Aitamurto et al., 2020); Automated, Robot or Algorithmic Journalism (Caswell and Dörr, 2018); and, among others, use of conversational bots –chatbots– in news websites (Ford and Hutchinson, 2019; Jones and Jones, 2019).
