Digitalization and Political Extremism

Information and communication technologies shape, direct, and deter political behaviour and institutions as the increase in internet usage regulate our daily lives. The advance of internet and digital media also shape political involvement, partisanship, and ideology. Internet, as the new media, is an important information source that shapes political behaviour along with other effects on societal layers. The new technologies provide a platform for the voices of minorities and disadvantaged communities, therefore urging a pluralist agenda. They are also blamed for the recent rise of populism and polarisation by creating echo-chambers, filter-bubbles, and the “fake news.” In this study, the authors analyse the possible effects of internet usage on political polarisation and ideological extremism by utilising World Values Survey Wave 7 Data for 40 countries. The findings show that internet usage and education level decrease extremism, while safety, work anxiety, and religiosity drive people to the extreme.

Epävarmuudesta arvokkaaseen lopputulokseen - serendipisyys tiedonhankintakäyttäytymisessä

A serendipitious event in everyday life is common: it means unexpected information that yields some unintended information and potential value later on. Serendipity as a word has been around for hundreds of years. As a studied concept it is rather recent. Serendipity is not just the unexpected information or experience but rather the ability to recognize and do something with it. Serendipitious discovery of information is different from purposive or known item search as it is more complicated and lasts much longer. The discovery of information by chance or accident is still looking it’s explicit place in models and frameworks of information behaviour. It is still not clear what constitutes the core of the research area of serendipity in information behaviour.The qualities of interaction among people, information, and objects differ in physical vs. digital environments. The bisociation, a creative association between different peaces of information may be computer supported.This article presents an overview of the research study of serendipity in information seeking behaviour. We explore serendipity mainly in the digital information environment. As a setting for our study we use six main drivers of serendipity research relating to digital enviroments presented in McCay-Peet and Toms (2017). The drivers are: 1. Theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of serendipity, 2) physical vs digital, 3) information overload, 4) filter bubbles, 5) user experience, and 6) user strategies.A new refined temporal model of information encountering by Erdelez and Makri (2020) is also presented in this article. The model presents a framework for better understanding of the temporal dimension of the information acquisition. At a macro level the model positions information encountering within contextual factors related for user, information, task and environment related characteristics.

Epävarmuudesta arvokkaaseen lopputulokseen - serendipisyys tiedonhankintakäyttäytymisessä

A serendipitious event in everyday life is common: it means unexpected information that yields some unintended information and potential value later on. Serendipity as a word has been around for hundreds of years. As a studied concept it is rather recent. Serendipity is not just the unexpected information or experience but rather the ability to recognize and do something with it. Serendipitious discovery of information is different from purposive or known item search as it is more complicated and lasts much longer. The discovery of information by chance or accident is still looking it’s explicit place in models and frameworks of information behaviour. It is still not clear what constitutes the core of the research area of serendipity in information behaviour. The qualities of interaction among people, information, and objects differ in physical vs. digital environments. The bisociation, a creative association between different peaces of information may be computer supported. This article presents an overview of the research study of serendipity in information seeking behaviour. We explore serendipity mainly in the digital information environment. As a setting for our study we use six main drivers of serendipity research relating to digital enviroments presented in McCay-Peet and Toms (2017). The drivers are: 1. Theoretical understanding of the phenomen of serendipity, 2) physical vs digital, 3) information overload, 4) filter bubbles, 5) user experience, and 6) user strategies. A new refined temporal model of information encountering by Erdelez and Makri (2020) is also presented in this article. The model presents a framework for better understanding of the temporal dimension of the information acqusition. At a macro level the model positions information encountering within contextual factors related for user, information, task and environment related characteristics.

Social Contradictions Media Measurement as a Way of University Scientific Discourse

The study examined academic research dedicated to the understanding of conflictology as a field of knowledge in the context of the ongoing mediatization of society. We analyzed the key features of the process of mediatization that affect the communication processes in society and media content. The aspects of the presentation of social contradictions in the media space, including the axiological aspect, have been studied. The study identified the specific of the Russian context, in terms of the diagnosis and resolutions of conflicts in the public sphere. The study also analyzed the current trends in the development of social media as a factor of audience differentiation and intensification of conflicts including the phenomena of the “cancel culture”, “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers”. In the same context we examined how changes in media consumption influence the quality of public communication. We identified the features of communication in the public mediatized space that lead to social agreement. It has been found that solving conflicts between participants in current social practice is viewed as an integrative result of such interaction. Future studies should attempt to identify media role in resolving existing social contradictions as well as its role in this process. The current study has identified criteria for an interdisciplinary approach for further research of the subject. It has been found that the results of interdisciplinary research in this area can be considered in the context of the universities’ implementation of their mission to strengthen their expertise and intellectual influence in society, to strengthen the interaction between academics and society for the further achievement of social harmony.

Epistemic Overconfidence in Algorithmic News Selection

The process of news consumption has undergone great changes over the past decade: Information is now available in an ever-increasing amount from a plethora of sources. Recent work suggests that most people would favor algorithmic solutions over human editors. This stands in contrast to public and scholarly debate about the pitfalls of algorithmic news selection—i.e., the so-called “filter bubbles.” This study therefore investigates reasons and motivations which might lead people to prefer algorithmic gatekeepers over human ones. We expect that people have more algorithmic appreciation when consuming news to pass time, entertain oneself, or out of escapism than when using news to keep up-to-date with politics (H1). Secondly, we hypothesize the extent to which people are confident in their own cognitive abilities to moderate that relationship: When people are overconfident in their own capabilities to estimate the relevance of information, they are more likely to have higher levels of algorithmic appreciation, due to the third person effect (H2). For testing those two pre-registered hypotheses, we conducted an online survey with a sample of 268 US participants and replicated our study using a sample of 384 Dutch participants. The results show that the first hypothesis cannot be supported by our data. However, a positive interaction between overconfidence and algorithmic appreciation for the gratification of surveillance (i.e., gaining information about the world, society, and politics) was found in both samples. Thereby, our study contributes to our understanding of the underlying reasons people have for choosing different forms of gatekeeping when selecting news.

Towards responsible media recommendation

Reading or viewing recommendations are a common feature on modern media sites. What is shown to consumers as recommendations is nowadays often automatically determined by AI algorithms, typically with the goal of helping consumers discover relevant content more easily. However, the highlighting or filtering of information that comes with such recommendations may lead to undesired effects on consumers or even society, for example, when an algorithm leads to the creation of filter bubbles or amplifies the spread of misinformation. These well-documented phenomena create a need for improved mechanisms for responsible media recommendation, which avoid such negative effects of recommender systems. In this research note, we review the threats and challenges that may result from the use of automated media recommendation technology, and we outline possible steps to mitigate such undesired societal effects in the future.