Is this a click towards diversity? Explaining when and why news users make diverse choices

Abstract

Modelling the different factors that lead people to choose news articles is one of the key challenges for understanding the diversity of news diets -as a news diet is the result of a series of decisions for certain articles over others, a sequence of choices that was made by the individual consumer. This study sheds light on the interplay between content-related (past behavior, habits, preferences) and situational factors (positioning, saturation, control). The latter could offer possibilities to promote more unexpected news encounters that diverge from past news consumption. To test this, a Pythonbased web application for interactively testing different forms of news personalization over time was used. 247 respondents used the system over a two-week period, in total making almost 23,000 choices. Our results show that: (1) Selections are influenced by a strong positioning effect that follows a reading pattern (left-right, up-down). This effect is stable across devices, topics, and preferences. (2) How much control people are given influences the length and the amount of different sessions (personalization leads to fewer and shorter sessions). (3) With high control, the diversity of preferences influenced the diversity of selected news more, possibly widening gaps between diversity-seeking and -averse users. (4) How often a topic was chosen in the last hour negatively impacts whether it gets chosen again, showing saturation effects. (5) Clicks on sports and economic articles can be explained by preferences, but not past behavior; for political news the opposite is found. (6) There is no significant correlation between the actual diversity (presented or selected topics) and the topic diversity perceived by the users -in spite of clear differences in actual diversity between the groups. From this we can conclude the importance of situational factors in modelling news selection and their potential to narrow This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

Diversity Concepts in Computer Science and Technology Development: A Critique

“…Kravčík, Schmid, and Igel (2019) consider (cognitive) skills and affective responses of students in e-learning systems, while also laying out the importance of adapting intelligent mentoring systems to the user “based on ethnic diversity, cultural self-perception, preferences” (p. 21). Users can also be diverse in their “situational contexts” such as “location, time and role” (Lakehal et al 2018), their relationships to other users in a social network (Sanz-Cruzado and Castells 2018), and—coming full circle—their preferences for diversity in recommendations (Loecherbach et al 2021).…”

Nudging towards news diversity: A theoretical framework for facilitating diverse news consumption through recommender design

“…News selections in NRSs depend not only on when and why readers seek out news but also on how they are presented. For example, Loecherbach et al (2021) showed that positioning can increase selection likelihood by up to 23%. This aligns with a larger body of research into recommender systems, which points to order effects that influence the perception and selection of choices (see Jesse and Jannach, 2021).…”

“…This aligns with a larger body of research into recommender systems, which points to order effects that influence the perception and selection of choices (see Jesse and Jannach, 2021). Theoretical explanations for order effects range from habitual behaviours (Loecherbach et al, 2021) or primacy effects (Tintarev, 2017) to the perceived importance of prominently positioned items (Groot Kormelink and Costera Meijer, 2020).…”

“…Algorithmic nudges are re-ranking approaches that increase exposure diversity. Loecherbach et al (2021) showed that ‘even non-preferred articles will be more likely selected if they are only high enough on the page’ (288). By accounting for this position bias when recommending diverse news articles, algorithmic nudges might considerably increase consumption diversity, especially when readers experience information overload or when their decisions are guided by System 1.…”

Nudging Towards Exposure Diversity: Examining the Effects of News Recommender Design on Audiences’ News Exposure Behaviours and Perceptions

“…Within communication science, scholars are increasingly reconsidering how recommender systems should be developed and how they can be used for purposes that support news organisations in their normative role of informing the public (Fields et al, 2018;Jones & Jones, 2019;Van den Bulck & Moe, 2018). A prominent idea in this discussion is the idea of so-called diversity-based news recommenders, also called diversity-enhancing news recommenders or diversity-oriented news recommenders (Bodó, 2019;Loecherbach et al, 2021). In contrast to other news recommender systems, the ultimate goal of these systems is not to provide individuals with more of the same news but to achieve diversity within individuals' news exposure behaviour.…”