From Editors to Algorithms DeVito, Michael A.
Digital journalism,
07/2017, Letnik:
5, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Facebook's News Feed is an emerging, influential force in our personal information flows, especially where news information is concerned. However, as the News Feed's story selection mechanism starts ...to supplant traditional editorial story selection, we have no window into its story curation process that is parallel to our extensive knowledge of the news values that drive traditional editorial curation. The sensitive, trade-secret nature of the News Feed and its constant updates and modifications make a traditional, computer science-based examination of this algorithmic giant difficult, if not impossible. This study takes an alternative approach, using a content analysis of Facebook's own patents, press releases, and Securities and Exchange Commission filings to identify a core set of algorithmic values that drive story selection on the Facebook News Feed. Informed by the principles of material culture analysis, it ranks these values to create a window into Facebook's curation process, and compares and contrasts Facebook's story selection values with traditional news values, examining the possible consequences of one set of values supplanting the other. The study finds a set of nine News Feed values that drive story selection: friend relationships, explicitly expressed user interests, prior user engagement, implicitly expressed user preferences, post age, platform priorities, page relationships, negatively expressed preferences, and content quality. It also finds evidence that friend relationships act as an overall influence on all other story selection values.
There have been growing concerns regarding the potential impact of social media on democracy and public debate. While some theorists have claimed that ICTs and social media would bring about a new ...independent public sphere and increase exposure to political divergence, others have warned that they would lead to polarization through the formation of echo chambers. The issue of social media echo chambers is both crucial and widely debated. This article attempts to provide a comprehensive account of the scientific literature on this issue, shedding light on the different approaches, their similarities, differences, benefits, and drawbacks, and offering a consolidated and critical perspective that can hopefully support future research in this area. Concretely, it presents the results of a systematic review of 55 studies investigating the existence of echo chambers on social media, providing a first classification of the literature and identifying patterns across the studies’ foci, methods and findings. We found that conceptual and methodological choices influence the results of research on this issue. Most importantly, articles that found clear evidence of echo chambers on social media were all based on digital trace data. In contrast, those that found no evidence were all based on self-reported data. Future studies should take into account the possible biases of the different approaches and the significant potential of combining self-reported data with digital trace data.
News recommender systems provide a technological architecture that helps shaping public discourse. Following a normative approach to news recommender system design, we test utility and external ...effects of a diversity-aware news recommender algorithm. In an experimental study using a custom-built news app, we show that diversity-optimized recommendations (1) perform similar to methods optimizing for user preferences regarding user utility, (2) that diverse news recommendations are related to a higher tolerance for opposing views, especially for politically conservative users, and (3) that diverse news recommender systems may nudge users towards preferring news with differing or even opposing views. We conclude that diverse news recommendations can have a depolarizing capacity for democratic societies.
This article discusses Spotify’s approach to music recommendation as datafication of listening. It discusses the hybrid types of music recommendation that Spotify presents to users. The article ...explores how datafication is connected to Spotify’s push for the personalization and contextualization of music recommendations based on a combination of the cultural knowledge found in editorial curation and the potential for large-scale personalization found in algorithmic curation. The article draws on the concept of ubiquitous music and other understandings of the affective and functional aspects of music listening as an everyday practice to reflect upon how Spotify’s approach to datafication of listening potentially leads it to prioritize music recommendations that entice users to engage in inattentive and continuous listening. In extension to this, the article seeks to contribute with knowledge about how the datafication of listening potentially shapes listening practices and conceptions of relevance and quality in music recommendation.
In the traditional stereotype that continues to this day, female users are naturally considered to be more disadvantaged in technology. As algorithmic curation becomes more prevalent in daily life, ...do gender-specific users adapt differently? Research on gender differences in this new technological environment is needed to prevent bias from traditional stereotypes. To this end, this study conducted 40 semi-structured interviews (20 males, 20 females) to explore: (1) How do male and female users interact with algorithmic curation? (2) How does algorithmic literacy affect users' interactions with algorithmic curation, and are there gender differences in this interaction? By applying qualitative content analysis, we found no significant gender differences overall, with female users showing slightly higher algorithmic literacy and better coping with algorithmic information curation. However, upon conducting specific comparisons, we still identified certain gender differences in the effects of algorithmic curation, which can offer insights for developing strategies to improve algorithmic literacy and stimulate algorithmic engagement among users of different genders.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This article discusses Spotify’s approach to music recommendation as datafication of listening. It discusses the hybrid types of music recommendation that Spotify presents to users. The article ...explores how datafication is connected to Spotify’s push for the personalization and contextualization of music recommendations based on a combination of the cultural knowledge found in editorial curation and the potential for large-scale personalization found in algorithmic curation. The article draws on the concept of ubiquitous music and other understandings of the affective and functional aspects of music listening as an everyday practice to reflect upon how Spotify’s approach to datafication of listening potentially leads it to prioritize music recommendations that entice users to engage in inattentive and continuous listening. In extension to this, the article seeks to contribute with knowledge about how the datafication of listening potentially shapes listening practices and conceptions of relevance and quality in music recommendation.
Datafication changes variables of our society within the political and cultural realms. In this study, we argue that platform affordances and algorithmic curation can impact users' civic ...participation through filtering and classifying users' online political content. Scholars from various disciplines - among them communication, computational studies, and political science - are working on different concepts in order to understand such effects. What we already know is that users' civic participation is often mediated by algorithmic curation on the one hand, and by the platform's built-in logic - often referred as mechanisms of affordances - on the other. Few works are cited across the field pointing out the significance of algorithmic personalization in the making of civic participation. One question that still plagues the research is how the impact of Facebook on civic participation is mediated by algorithmic curation and platform affordances. This paper responds to this need by locating existing scholarship within a common conceptual framework using as a starting point: algorithmic curation, civic participation, and platform affordances. This provides a logical structure that facilitates connections between concepts and disciplines that might otherwise be difficult to discern on an interdisciplinary basis.
Previous research on the platformization of news has mostly been devoted to considering the effects of social media on the news industry. The current study focuses on Taboola and Outbrain, two ...leading content recommendation platforms. The companies form "partnerships" with news organizations, through which they take over a designated space on news websites and curate news, sponsored content, and advertisements, creating a blend that-the companies claim-maximizes monetization. We argue that the unique business model and distribution mechanism of these companies has a distinct effect on news sites, their audiences, and ultimately the journalism profession. An empirical analysis of 97,499 recommended content items, scraped from nine Israeli news sites, suggests that the spaces created by these partnerships blur the distinction between editorial and monetization logics. In addition, we find the creation of indirect network effects: while large media groups benefit from the circulation of sponsored content across their websites, smaller publishers pay Taboola and Outbrain as advertisers to drive traffic to their websites. Thus, even though these companies discursively position themselves as "gallants of the open web"-freeing publishers from the grip of walled-garden platforms-they de facto expose the news industry to the influence of the platform economy.
Este artículo examina la relación entre la polarización política y los medios de comunicación en la sociedad contemporánea. La polarización se ha convertido en un fenómeno prevalente en muchos ...países, caracterizado por la creciente división de opiniones y actitudes extremas entre diferentes grupos políticos. Los medios de comunicación, como actores clave en la difusión de información y la formación de la opinión pública, desempeñan un papel fundamental en la perpetuación o mitigación de este proceso. Este trabajo presenta una conceptualización del fenómeno y examina su vinculación con la situación mediática, estableciendo su origen y también sus consecuencias: la segmentación de audiencias, el sensacionalismo o el sesgo mediático. Asimismo, se realiza una aproximación a la inteligencia artificial, el análisis de datos, la personalización de los mensajes, los chatbots o los algoritmos como agentes influyentes en el crecimiento de la polarización política. Los efectos de la polarización afectan a la sociedad en su consumo de medios y al propio funcionamiento de la democracia. La fragmentación informativa, la creciente desconfianza hacia los medios, el absentismo en la vida política son algunas de las consecuencias más significativas. De ahí que en este artículo se aborden las posibles soluciones y estrategias para fomentar un discurso público más constructivo y menos polarizado.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
La motivación de este estudio es el análisis de Google Discover tanto desde el punto de vista del usuario que lo utiliza como del webmaster que trata de posicionar su contenido y con ello conseguir ...más visitas. Asimismo, el objetivo principal es caracterizar y sintetizar la visión experta sobre Google Discover, a partir de una revisión de la literatura. La metodología empleada es la revisión sistematizada, más específicamente, la scoping review (revisión sistematizada exploratoria) de la literatura gris recuperada utilizando el buscador generalista de Google en su dominio google.es, que se completa con un análisis funcional de la herramienta desde las dos visiones (usuario y webmaster). Gracias a este análisis se ha podido comprobar qué es Discover, cómo usarlo y cómo optimizar el contenido para aparecer en su feed.
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