Thinking Outside the Black-Box: The Case for "Algorithmic Sovereignty" in Social Media

This article is an interdisciplinary critical analysis of personalization systems and the gatekeeping role of current mainstream social media. The first section presents a literature review of data-driven personalization and its challenges in social media. The second section sheds light on increasing concerns regarding algorithms' ability to overtly persuade—and covertly manipulate—users for the sake of engagement, introducing the emergence of the exclusive ownership of behavioral modification through hyper-nudging techniques. The third section empirically analyzes users' expectations and behaviors regarding such data-driven personalization to frame a conceptualization of users' agency. The fourth section introduces the concept of "algorithmic sovereignty." Current projects that aim to grant this algorithmic sovereignty highlight some potential applications. Together this novel theoretical framework and empirical applications suggest that, to preserve trust, social media should open their personalization algorithms to a social negotiation as the first step toward a more sustainable social media landscape. To decentralize the immense power of mainstream social media, guarantee a democratic oversight, and mitigate the unintended undesirable consequences of their algorithmic curation, public institutions and civil society could help in developing and researching public algorithms, fostering a collective awareness so as to eventually ensure a fair and accountable "algorithmic sovereignty.

Personalization in Social Media: Challenges and Opportunities for Democratic Societies

Personalization algorithms perform a fundamental role of knowledge management in order to restrain information overload, reduce complexity and satisfy individuals. Personalization of media content in mainstream social media, however, can be used for micro-target political messages, and can also create filter bubbles and strengthen echo chambers that restrain the exposure to diverse, challenging and serendipitous information. These represent fundamental issues for media law and ethics both seeking to preserve autonomy of choice and media pluralism in democratic societies. As a result, informational empowerment may be reduced and group polarization, audience fragmentation, conspiratorial thinking and other democratically negative consequences could arise. Even though research about the detrimental effects of personalization is more often inconsistent, there is no doubt that in the long run the algorithmic capacity to steer our lives in increasingly sophisticated ways will dramatically expand. Key questions need to be further discussed; for instance, to what extent can profiling account for the complexity of individual identity? To what extent are users, media and algorithms responsible in such practices? What are the main values and trade-offs that inform designers in such a fundamental societal algorithmic arbitrage? How is social media’s personalization directly or indirectly regulated in the European Union? The thesis firstly presents a critical overview of information societies, analyzing social media content personalization practices, dynamics and unintended consequences. Secondly, it explores the role of serendipity as a design and ethical principle for social media. Thirdly, the European legal landscape with regard to personalization is analyzed from a regulatory, governance and ethical perspective. Finally, it is introduced the concept of ‘algorithmic sovereignty’ as a valuable abstraction to begin to frame technical, legal and political preconditions and standards to preserve users’ autonomy, and to minimize the risks arising in the context of personalization

The European Media Freedom Act : media freedom, freedom of expression and pluralism

This study analyses the European Media Freedom Act proposal. It provides a political and historical overview of EU policies in the field of media and on information society at large, also taking into account the debate regarding EU competences on media pluralism and media freedom. The study reasons on the legal basis of the proposed Act, and then analyses the provisions of it under each of the Chapters of the Act, basing on relevant academic literature, policy documents, and empirical data. It concludes with policy recommendations.Study requested by the LIBE Committee at the European Parliament

The algorithmic public opinion:a literature review

In the context of a society where digital technologies have come to pervasively intermediate most social, cultural and economic processes, algorithms represent an important socio-technical component of ‘the social’. Unsurprisingly, algorithms also hold an important role in the formation of public opinion. The way people access news and informational content, thus forming their political and social views, is now largely mediated by social media platforms. Their algorithms represent new types of gatekeepers that contribute in decisive ways to shape individual and collective access to information. In this literature review, we discuss the most relevant research concurring to the existence of what we define as an 'algorithmic public opinion', from an interdisciplinary perspective that brings together the sociology of media, critical algorithm studies and information design