Beyond the Hype: Robotic Process Automation's Public Perception Over Time

The perception of emerging technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) goes through the phases of emergence, growth, and maturity. In the emergence phase, potential users of the technology naturally have unrealistic expectations of high performance. The expected positive impact of the technology drives the subsequent growth phase. Later, these exaggerated expectations increasingly give way to realistic assessments until a maturity phase is reached. The current academic debate on RPA argues that there is also a fear narrative that hinders wider adoption of this technology. In this article, we present an analysis of over 95,000 news articles on RPA published between 2015 and September 2020 to study the public perception of RPA. We employ sentiment analysis and topic modeling to evaluate positive/negative and subjective/objective views as well as major topics identified in news media. Based on this analysis, we demonstrate that RPA can now be considered a mature technology which seems to have passed a hype without enduring a large dip in expectations. Building on these insights, this article discusses some potential avenues for future research "beyond the hype".