# Employing a Chatbot for News Dissemination during Crisis: Design, Implementation and Evaluation
## 4 The COVID-19 Reporter Chatbot: Design and Implementation
### Design  
As mentioned earlier, the design of the COVINFO Reporter chatbot was based on previous experience [8] in which a chatbot based on the Quriobot plugin was embedded in a news article published on a WordPress platform, as a means of alternative narrative. Although the focus of the current project was on facilitating access to multiple news articles, the main idea was the same in both cases: the deployment of an alternative means of accessing existing information. Of course, one must also consider the urgency of the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forces users to seek important information on how to deal with the crisis, which affects all aspects of their daily lives.  
For the process of selecting the appropriate chatbot platform, certain parameters were taken into account. Specifically, the study prompted for a simple chatbot platform that can be embedded in a WordPress Content Management System (CMS), since the majority of the news websites is based on this CMS. Moreover, for future extensions of this effort, the possibility of integrating the chatbot into other social media platforms needed to be supported by the selected chatbot platform. Based on the above, the ManyChat chatbot platform (built primarily of Facebook messenger) was excluded. Furthermore, other established chatbot platforms, like Amazon Lex and Google Dialogflow, do not offer their own plugins for WordPress (some related plugging is offered by third parties). In addition, those platforms are built for natural language interaction. Thus, the Quriobot platform was selected based on the facts that it supports WordPress integration and, also, other social media platforms (Facebook Messenger, Viber, Slack, WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc.) for future extensions and its primary focus is on supporting predetermined chat flows.  
The definition of the requirements during the design step was supported by previous chatbot implementations. [PERSON] et al. (2018) [10] consider the deployment of a chatbot on Facebook Messenger to help people submit reports of violence and misconduct during the 2017 Kenyan elections. During the design phase of the COVINFO Reporter chatbot, this option was examined but rejected as being limited only to users of one messaging platform. However, this functionality can be deployed at a later stage of the chatbot development, since the chosen implementation platform supports a range of messaging platforms. The BBC has also piloted several conversational chatbots based on pre-scripted material written in a multiple-choice format, mainly focused on special events, e.g., the UK's general elections [12; 32].  
Figure 1: The three steps in the development of the COVINFO Reporter chatbot.  
Since the scope of this study was to develop a chatbot that would offer an alternative method of accessing existing information, a retrieval-based chatbot with predetermined responses was selected. The BBC website was chosen as the source of the chatbot information, since, among other characteristics given in the RQs and Method section, it has developed a significant number of web articles (text and video) that examine various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic [33].