Abstract

News diversity in the media has for a long time been a foundational and uncontested basis for ensuring that the communicative needs of individuals and society at large are met. Today, people increasingly rely on online content and recommender systems to consume information challenging the traditional concept of news diversity. In addition, the very concept of diversity, which differs between disciplines, will need to be re-evaluated requiring a interdisciplinary investigation, which requires a new level of mutual cooperation between computer scientists, social scientists, and legal scholars. Based on the outcome of a multidisciplinary workshop, we have the following recommendations, directed at researchers, funders, legislators, regulators, and the media industry: 1. Do more research on news recommenders and diversity. 2. Create a safe harbor for academic research with industry data. 3. Optimize the role of public values in news recommenders. 4. Create a meaningful governance framework. 5. Fund a joint lab to spearhead the needed interdisciplinary research, boost practical innovation, develop. reference solutions, and transfer insights into practice.

@techreport{bernstein2020,
author = {Bernstein, Abraham and {de Vreese}, Claes and Helberger, Natali and Schulz, Wolfgang and Zweig, Katharina and Baden, Christian and Beam {Michael A} and Hauer, {Marc P} and Heitz, Lucien and Jürgens, Pascal and Katzenbach, Christian and Kille, Benjamin and Klimkiewicz, Beate and Loosen, Wiebke and Moeller, Judith and Radanovic, Goran and Shani, Guy and Tintarev, Nava and Tolmeijer, Suzanne and {Van Atteveldt}, Wouter and Vrijenhoek, Sanne and Zueger, Theresa },
booktitle = {Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop 19482},
chapter = {Diversity in News Recommendations}
institution = {Leibnitz Gesellschaft},
organization = {Leibnitz Gesellschaft}
publisher = {Leibnitz Gesellschaft}, 
year = {2020},
}