Natali Helberger was interviewed by the “The Artificial Intelligence Podcast” on the Dutch radiostation BNR. She elaborated on how information and communication technology shapes news media, as well as her insights into ethical and transparent practices in AI.
Click here to listen to the full episode of Natali’s Podcast.
On Friday December 14th, the Media Fast Forward conference took place in Brussels. This event focused on contemporary digital challenges, such artificial intelligence, virtual reality and personalised experiences, and highlighted some important practices and opportunities related to these societal challenges. Judith is invited to present her research, together with Damian, on the impact of algorithmic design on news diversity.
On Friday December 7th, Phd candidate Paddy Leerssen traveled to Brussels to attend a conference organized by the European University Institute’s Center for Media Pluralism and Freedom: ‘Monitoring Media Pluralism in Europe: Between Old Risks and New threats’. Findings were presented of the latest Media Pluralism Monitor report, a massive survey on the state of play of media pluralism and press freedom in Europe spanning 31 states including all EU Member States. The group included representatives from the European Commission, Council of Europe and ERGA. In addition to the Monitor’s latest findings, the group also discussed new challenges for the monitoring of online media – a topic which is highly relevant to Paddy’s research, which focuses on algorithmic transparency and the governance of media pluralism in social media recommender systems!
On Octobe
r 27th, the personalised team (Natali, Claes, Tom, Gijs and Brahim) attended the first Digital Society Conferencein Amersfoort. This initiative is a joint venture of fourteen Dutch universities, each of which is investing in one or more of the seven programme lines. On the conference, the team gave a presentation on the topic of political microtargeting (as part of the track ‘Citizenship & Democracy’), and engaged in an interesting interaction with stakeholders from different backgrounds. We had a very inspiring and productive day.
Last week Sarah moved to Cambridge, United Kingdom, for a five month research visit at the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL), Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge. Sarah is currently working on the third paper of her doctoral project. In Cambridge she can engage with and present her work to a new group of researchers, including David Erdos, former IViR-colleague Christina Angelopoulos, and laywers and computer scientists working at Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory. Sarah obtained a grant from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds for her visit.
Good luck in Cambridge Sarah!
This team paper examines whether personalized communication from companies affects our willingness to engage in online self-disclosure. We examine how we balance our sense of eventual benefits, threats to privacy, and perceptions of trust when companies collect online information with which to personalize their services. Our results show that these personalization effects are context-dependent. Personalization is seen as negative when done by news and commercial organizations. This is not, however, the case with health websites.
Click here to read the paper!
We presented our new work on pathways to online news use at the annual conference of the ECPR. For this project we make use of a combination of tracking and survey data. It is a collaboration with Lisa Merten and Cornelius Puschmann of the Hans-Bredow Institute in Hamburg, Germany.
Source: Creatures of Habit? Explaining Pathways to Online News Use in the Context of Browsing Sessions
The report “Beyond the filter bubble: concepts, myths, evidence and issues for future debates” we wrote earlier this year for the Commissariaat voor de Media was shared with the Dutch parliament as part of the Kamerbrief over onderzoek naar de toekomst van onafhankelijke journalistiek in Nederland.
A blog about insights from the 2018 Amsterdam Symposium on News Personalisation was featured on the LSE Media Policy Project Blog.
Using artificial intelligence in news intelligently: towards responsible algorithmic journalism
We were happy to learn that a part of the national final highschool exams in the Netherlands (the eindexamen maatschappijwetenschappen vwo) featured an excerpt from a blog post we wrote earlier about the findings from our research. Referring to polarization, students were asked questions about the role of the media and of media regulators.
The exam (and the answers) are also available online.