Automated editorial control:Responsibility for news personalisation under European media law

News personalisation allows social and traditional media media to show each individual different information that is ‘relevant’ to them. The technology plays an important role in the digital media environment, as it navigates individuals through the vast amounts of content available online. However, determining what news an individual should see involves nuanced editorial judgment. The public and legal debate have highlighted the dangers, ranging filter bubbles to polarisation, that could result from ignoring the need for such editorial judgment.This dissertation analyses how editorial responsibility should be safeguarded in the context of news personalisation. It argues that a key challenge to the responsible implementation of news personalisation lies in the way it changes the exercise of editorial control. Rather than an editor deciding what news is on the frontpage, personalisation algorithms’ recommendations are influenced by software engineers, news recipients, business departments, product managers, and/or editors and journalists. The dissertation uses legal and empirical research to analyse the roles and responsibilities of three central actors: traditional media, platforms, and news users. It concludes law can play an important role by enabling stakeholders to control personalisation in line with editorial values. It can do so by for example ensuring the availability of metrics that allow editors to evaluate personalisation algorithms, or by enabling individuals to understand and influence how personalisation shapes their news diet. At the same time, law must ensure an appropriate allocation of responsibility in the face of fragmenting editorial control, including by moving towards cooperative responsibility for platforms and ensuring editors can control the design of personalisation algorithms

Atomic layer deposition of silicon nitride from novel precursor DSBAS and nitrogen plasma

The deposition of high-quality silicon nitride (SiNx) layers is required in the manufacturing of state-of-the-art field-effect transistors (FETs), which are used everywhere throughout modern computing. An important application of SiNx in FETs is as a side-wall gate spacer, where it functions as a barrier layer to protect sensitive inner layers, against for example oxygen ingress and etch processing steps. From a literature study further opportunities and applications of SiNx films in future three-dimensional FET architectures will be discussed. It will be shown that a low thermal budget is essential for these applications of SiNx, in addition to obtaining a high quality and a high conformality. A novel precursor Di(Sec-Butyl)AminoSilane (DSBAS, SiH3N(C4H9)2) was employed to develop a plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition (ALD) process to grow high-quality SiNx at low substrate temperatures. Material properties have been characterised over a wide temperature range and have been compared with properties of a similar organosilane precursor Bis(Tert-Butyl-Amino)Silane (BTBAS, SiH2[NH(C4H9)]2). Compared to the BTBAS process and other plasma-assisted ALD processes reported in the literature, the obtained growth per cycle was low. However, typically high-quality SiNx films were obtained as was demonstrated by low wet etch-rates, low C, O, and H content, high mass densities and N/Si values close to stoichiometric Si3N4. The high-quality of the SiNx was also investigated in trenches with aspect ratio 1:4.5, relevant for FET applications. High quality was confirmed at horizontal surfaces in the trench, while at vertical surfaces the quality was slightly poorer. However, the conformality was proven to be not sufficient. The reduced thickness and quality at vertical side-walls also suggest that ions play a role in the quality and growth of SiNx films.The results in this work provide support for a growth mechanism, previously proposed for BTBAS. This mechanism explains how the split-off of the only amino-ligand in a DSBAS-molecule in the precursor half-cycle, reduces redeposition of ligand fragments in the subsequent plasma half-cycle leading to high film quality. The new insights obtained in this work have resulted in new proposed experiments, in order to further investigate the reaction mechanisms involved. The deposition of high-quality silicon nitride (SiNx) layers is required in the manufacturing of state-of-the-art field-effect transistors (FETs), which are used everywhere throughout modern computing. An important application of SiNx in FETs is as a side-wall gate spacer, where it functions as a barrier layer to protect sensitive inner layers, against for example oxygen ingress and etch processing steps. From a literature study further opportunities and applications of SiNx films in future three-dimensional FET architectures will be discussed. It will be shown that a low thermal budget is essential for these applications of SiNx, in addition to obtaining a high quality and a high conformality. A novel precursor Di(Sec-Butyl)AminoSilane (DSBAS, SiH3N(C4H9)2) was employed to develop a plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition (ALD) process to grow high-quality SiNx at low substrate temperatures. Material properties have been characterised over a wide temperature range and have been compared with properties of a similar organosilane precursor Bis(Tert-Butyl-Amino)Silane (BTBAS, SiH2[NH(C4H9)]2). Compared to the BTBAS process and other plasma-assisted ALD processes reported in the literature, the obtained growth per cycle was low. However, typically high-quality SiNx films were obtained as was demonstrated by low wet etch-rates, low C, O, and H content, high mass densities and N/Si values close to stoichiometric Si3N4. The high-quality of the SiNx was also investigated in trenches with aspect ratio 1:4.5, relevant for FET applications. High quality was confirmed at horizontal surfaces in the trench, while at vertical surfaces the quality was slightly poorer. However, the conformality was proven to be not sufficient. The reduced thickness and quality at vertical side-walls also suggest that ions play a role in the quality and growth of SiNx films.The results in this work provide support for a growth mechanism, previously proposed for BTBAS. This mechanism explains how the split-off of the only amino-ligand in a DSBAS-molecule in the precursor half-cycle, reduces redeposition of ligand fragments in the subsequent plasma half-cycle leading to high film quality. The new insights obtained in this work have resulted in new proposed experiments, in order to further investigate the reaction mechanisms involved

Editorial independence in an automated media system

The media has increasingly grown to rely on automated decision-making to produce and distribute news. This trend challenges our understanding of editorial independence by transforming the role of human editorial judgment and creating new dependencies on external software and data providers, engineers, and platforms. Recent policy initiatives such as the EU’s Media Action Plan and Digital Services Act are now beginning to revisit the way law can enable the media to act independently in the context of new technological tools and actors. Fully understanding and addressing the challenges automation poses to editorial independence, however, first requires better normative insight into the functions editorial independence performs in European media policy. This article provides a normative framework of editorial independence’s functions in European media policy and uses it to explore the new challenges posed by the automation of editorial decision-making