A Balancing Act: How Media Professionals Perceive the Implementation of News Recommender Systems

Abstract

News recommender systems (NRS), the algorithmic automation and personalization of news recommendations, may benefit both media producers and users. Yet, they raise concerns about the quality, diversity, and responsibility of journalism. Despite growing research, empirical investigations on news media’s employment of NRS have remained scarce, particularly in small media markets and across different organizational types. To better understand how and why news organizations implement NRS, what benefits and concerns media professionals see, and how the perceived impact of NRS relates to how media professionals imagine their audience, we conducted qualitative interviews with 36 media professionals across two national contexts (CH and NL) and different types of news organizations. Overall, media professionals see the implementation of NRS as a balancing act between co-orientation with and demarcation from other news organizations and intermediaries. The perceived impact on users depends on media professionals’ imagined audiences.