Affiliate member Magdalena Wojcieszak got awarded a prestigious ERC grant:

Europeans Exposed to Dissimilar Views in the Media: Investigating Backfire Effects
In many countries, hostility, distrust, and intolerance are on the rise. In this context, scholars claim that encountering dissimilar arguments fosters tolerance, and policymakers promote exposure to different views in the media. Yet, these efforts can make people more extreme and more hostile toward the other side. Magdalena Wojcieszak’s project will use online behaviour tracking, automated content analyses, panel surveys, qualitative work, and experiments in four countries to address a fundamental question: Under which conditions exactly does exposure to dissimilar views in the media amplify or attenuate hostilities among citizens with different opinions? The results will offer insights for scholars, policymakers and practitioners working on media diversity and social cohesion.

Yesterday, October 2nd, Sophie Boerman gave a lecture during the Master Class Behavioral Targeting at the UT in Enschede.
This master class was organized by the UT / Faculty BMS (Digital Marketing Lab / Departments ESIM and CS), the UT Department Marketing and Communications (M&C) and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT Digital).

  
You can watch a video of Sophie’s presentation at the Smart Marketing Facebook Group

Full details about the masterclass can be found here:
https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/nikos/education/masterclass-behavioral-targeting/

Tomorrow Judith will present our research  at one of the largest science festivals in the Netherlands. The festival is for know-it-alls and those who still want to know it all.

Stay tuned for a video of the presentation.

Source: Common Market Law Review – Kluwer Law Online

Facebook’s recent overture towards more transparency has been a topic of debate at the microtargeting symposium, which occurred at the University of Amsterdam, in light of an upcoming special issue of Internet Policy Review. The discussion between leading academics in the field of political microtargeting led to an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, in which Zuckerberg is encouraged to “engage with governments, regulators, election monitoring bodies, civil society and academics to develop public policies and guidelines for ensuring fairness, equality, and democratic oversight in digital political campaigns.”

In light of the upcoming special issue of Internet Policy Review on political microtargeting, guest editors Balazs Bodo, Natali Helberger, and Claes de Vreese organised a symposium on the topic. There, authors discussed each other’s submitted papers.

Hosted by the University of Amsterdam, Kathryn Montgomery (American University) kicked off by discussing Mauricio Moura’s (George 

Washington University) paper on the use of WhatsApp by political campaigns in Brazil. Then, Sabrina Sassi (Université Laval) discussed a paper by Tom Dobber et al. (University of Amsterdam) on the conditions under which political microtargeting occurs in the Netherlands. Simon Kruschinski (University of Mainz) then took over to discuss Sabrina Sassi’s work on different aspects of microtargeting in the political realm. The first half of the symposium was concluded by Mauricio Moura, who discussed Simon Kruschinski and André Haller’s (University of Bamberg) analysis of data-driven campaigning in Germany.

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Judith presented our work on diversity in algorithmic recommendation sets in Vienna at the Symposium “Digital Media, Political Participation and Challenges to Democracy”. With keynotes by W. Lance Bennett, Michael X. Delli Carpini, Jörg Matthes, and Barbara Pfetsch, it was an inspiring event to exchange thoughts and conjuring big ideas.

Source: Local Edition: Does ‘the business side’ have to be a separate side? | Poynter

Personalised Communication will contribute to the NWA Big Data Route with a project called “FairNews: Nieuwsvoorziening in een Big Data Data tijdperk (Fair News:News in a Big Data Age)”. Under the lead of Claes de Vreese (UvA/CW), Claudia Hauff (TUD), and Joris Hoboken (UvA/IvIR) and in collaboration with Dutch quality newspaper de Volkskrant, the project will deal with the question: How far can and may algorithms go in filtering information?

More info here.

ASCoR and IViR – Research Priority Area Personalised Communication presents this latest in the Personalised Communication Lecture Series, which is being given by Dr. Daniel Kreiss as the closing Keynote of the Amsterdam Symposium on Political Micro-Targeting

Source: Micro-targeting, the Quantified Persuasion – ASCoR – University of Amsterdam