Webinar – Toward Measuring Viewpoint Diversity in News Consumption
About the topic
Cyprus Center for Algorithmic Transparency – CyCAT continuous its online seminar series, with a presentation by Dr. Nava Tintarev, Assistant Professor at TU Delft.
The “Toward Measuring Viewpoint Diversity in News Consumption” will be held on Sunday, June 9, 2019 at 13.30 (GMT) / 15:30 (Cyprus) and is intended to engage researchers, academics, students and developers. The 1-hour presentation will be followed by a 15-minute open discussion.
Presentation abstract:
The growing volume of digital data stimulates the adoption of recommender systems in different socioeconomic domains, including e-commerce, music, and news industries. While news recommenders help consumers deal with information overload and increase their engagement and satisfaction, their use also raises an increasing number of societal concerns, such as “Matthew effects”, “filter bubbles”, and an overall lack of transparency. Considerable recommender systems research has been conducted on balancing diversification of content with relevance, however, this work focuses specifically on topical diversity. For readers, diversity of _viewpoint_ on a topic in news is however more relevant. This allows for measures of diversity that are multi-faceted, and not necessarily driven by previous consumption habits. This talk introduces preliminary work together with several Dutch news organizations (e.g., Blendle, Persgroep, and FDMediagroep), aiming to find ways to help users explore viewpoint diversity. The talk will describe our first steps toward informing diverse content selection in a way that is meaningful and understandable, to both content providers and newsreaders.
About CyCAT and the series:
The Cyprus Center for Algorithmic Transparency (CyCAT) is hosted at the Open University of Cyprus, the second public university in Cyprus and the only one dedicated to open and distance education. We collaborate with other researchers internationally and have recently teamed up with four leading universities across Europe and Israel through an H2020 Twinning grant. Our team holds key expertise in the algorithmic processes involved in information access, user interactions with algorithmic systems, user-system interaction, as well as the social and cultural implications of algorithmic processes.
The CyCAT research seminar series is open to participants worldwide. Its goal is to promote the understanding of algorithmic transparency and accountability, and to network with other professionals and researchers working in the area.
CyCAT has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon
2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant
Agreement No. 810105.