News recommender systems: a programmatic research review

Abstract

News recommender systems (NRS) are becoming a ubiquitous part of the digital media landscape. Particularly in the realm of political news, the adoption of NRS can significantly impact journalistic distribution, in turn affecting journalistic work practices and news consumption. Thus, NRS touch both the supply and demand of political news. In recent years, there has been a strong increase in research on NRS. Yet, the field remains dispersed across supply and demand research perspectives. Therefore, the contribution of this programmatic research review is threefold. First, we conduct a scoping study to review scholarly work on the journalistic supply and user demand sides. Second, we identify underexplored areas. Finally, we advance five recommendations for future research from a political communication perspective.