Developing the user perspective in the plurality dialogue

Professor Natali Helberger is professor of Information Law at the University of Amsterdam’s (UvA), Institute for Information Law (IViR). Here she highlights the need for the plurality debate to focus on user demand and consumption, in particular defining just what a sufficiently diverse news diet is, and to what ends this is being pursued

Is it possible to regulate broadcasting for ‘Distinctiveness’?

Founding Director of the Media Policy Project Damian Tambini offers a view on the recently-published white paper about the future of the BBC

Facebook is a news editor: the real issues to be concerned about

Natali Helberger and Damian Trilling, both of the University of Amsterdam and the Institute for Information Law (IViR), write that whilst Facebook’s use of human editors may bring comfort to some, there are wider issues to do with editorial responsibility that need to be addressed

User Generated Diversity. Some reflections on how to improve the quality of amateur productions

The potential of user created content to make a meaningful contribution to media diversity is subject to debates. Central to these debates is the argument of the quality of amateur productions. This article will take a close look at this argument, and make some suggestions on how to improve the quality and utility of amateur productions with regard to the democratic functions of media.user created content, diversity, quality, strategies

Exposure diversity as a design principle for recommender systems

Personalized recommendations in search engines, social media and also in more traditional media increasingly raise concerns over potentially negative consequences for diversity and the quality of public discourse. The algorithmic filtering and adaption of online content to personal preferences and interests is often associated with a decrease in the diversity of information to which users are exposed. Notwithstanding the question of whether these claims are correct or not, this article discusses whether and how recommendations can also be designed to stimulate more diverse exposure to information and to break potential ‘filter bubbles’ rather than create them. Combining insights from democratic theory, computer science and law, the article makes suggestions for design principles and explores the potential and possible limits of ‘diversity sensitive design’.Peer reviewe

Anticipating Impacts: Using Large-Scale Scenario Writing to Explore Diverse Implications of Generative AI in the News Environment

The tremendous rise of generative AI has reached every part of society - including the news environment. There are many concerns about the individual and societal impact of the increasing use of generative AI, including issues such as disinformation and misinformation, discrimination, and the promotion of social tensions. However, research on anticipating the impact of generative AI is still in its infancy and mostly limited to the views of technology developers and/or researchers. In this paper, we aim to broaden the perspective and capture the expectations of three stakeholder groups (news consumers; technology developers; content creators) about the potential negative impacts of generative AI, as well as mitigation strategies to address these. Methodologically, we apply scenario writing and use participatory foresight in the context of a survey (n=119) to delve into cognitively diverse imaginations of the future. We qualitatively analyze the scenarios using thematic analysis to systematically map potential impacts of generative AI on the news environment, potential mitigation strategies, and the role of stakeholders in causing and mitigating these impacts. In addition, we measure respondents' opinions on a specific mitigation strategy, namely transparency obligations as suggested in Article 52 of the draft EU AI Act. We compare the results across different stakeholder groups and elaborate on the (non-) presence of different expected impacts across these groups. We conclude by discussing the usefulness of scenario-writing and participatory foresight as a toolbox for generative AI impact assessment

Safeguarding the Journalistic DNA: Attitudes towards the Role of Professional Values in Algorithmic News Recommender Designs

In contrast to the extensive debate on the influence of algorithmic news recommenders (ANRs) on individual news diets, the interaction between such systems and journalistic norms and missions remain under-studied. The change in the relationship between journalists and the audience caused by the transition to personalized news delivery has profound consequences for the understanding of what journalism should be. To investigate how media practitioners perceive the impact of ANRs on their professional norms and media organizations’ missions, and how these norms and missions can be integrated into ANR design, this article looks at two quality newspapers from the Netherlands and Switzerland. Using an interview-based approach conducted with practitioners in different departments (e.g. journalists, data scientists, and product managers), it explores how ANRs interact with organization-centred and audience-centred journalistic values. The paper’s findings indicate a varying degree of prominence for specific values between individual practitioners in the context of their perception of ANRs. At the same time, the paper also reveals that some organization-centred (e.g. transparency) and most audience-centred (e.g. usability) values are viewed as prerequisites for successful ANR design by practitioners with different professional backgrounds

Public Service Media and Exposure Diversity: Introduction

Exposure diversity is a relatively new and as yet to be explicitly formulated objective of contemporary media policy. While it holds certain potential—in particular in the messy digital space characterized by abundance and exponentially increased user choices—it comes with certain risks too. The role of public service media in ensuring exposure diversity is an underexplored yet important topic of media policy and law. This article introduces the special section on public service media and exposure diversity in the International Journal of Communication and outlines the key motivation behind it. It briefly presents the main contributions and a summary of their arguments, as well as the red line that holds them together

Caution! You are now exercising editorial control! – Exploring initiatives to raise the quality of User Created News, and their legal side-effects

This article will explore some of their strategies to challenge amateurs to contribute content that not only reaches beyond the private sphere, but that also satisfies the expectations of an audience that is used to a certain standard of professional quality. It will then explain if and if so how the different strategies to improve and maintain the quality of UCN can have (undesirable) legal side-effects as they trigger legal responsibilities. This article argues that the present legal framework makes the incorporation of UCN not only risky; it also acts as a serious disincentive for quality engagement with UCN in the first place