Makhortykh, Mykola; Urman, Aleksandra; Wijermars, Mariëlle (30 May 2022). Authoritarian News Personalisation and the 2021 Russian Parliamentary Elections (Unpublished). In: 72nd Annual ICA Conference - "One world, one network?!". Paris, France. 26.05.-30.05.2022.
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)In this study we investigate how algorithmic news personalisation impacts dissemination of political news in the authoritarian context. To do so, we look at a major Russian news personalisation system - Yandex.Zen - which provides individualized news feeds to its massive audience (61.9 million users) and plays a key role in the regional media ecosystems, which the Russian government increasingly aims to control. Using as a case study the 2021 parliamentary elections in Russia, we conduct an agent-based audit of Zen-based personalisation system before, during, and after the election period to investigate what election-related news did it prioritize and whether this prioritization was subjected to bias (e.g., by prioritizing content favourable to the ruling party). Using four agent personas (e.g., pro-regime news reader or a news avoider), we identify the tendency of Zen to prioritize non-political content (e.g., hobby- and celebrity-related news) and content favourable to the ruling party on the eve of the elections, thus raising concerns about news personalisation serving as a form of hidden censorship in the Russian context.
Item Type: |
Conference or Workshop Item (Paper) |
|---|---|
Division/Institute: |
03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Institute of Communication and Media Studies (ICMB) |
UniBE Contributor: |
Makhortykh, Mykola, Urman, Aleksandra |
Subjects: |
000 Computer science, knowledge & systems 300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology 300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 320 Political science |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Mykola Makhortykh |
Date Deposited: |
21 Jun 2022 11:30 |
Last Modified: |
05 Dec 2022 16:20 |
Uncontrolled Keywords: |
elections, Russia, authoritarianism, censorship, manipulation, recommendation system, Yandex |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/170676 |
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