Blame it on the algorithm?
Infomedia's newly appointed professor Erik Knudsen will hold a promotion lecture on Wednesday March 25th at 13.15 in Ulrike Pihl's auditorium.
Hovedinnhold
The lecture is open for staff and students at Infomedia and others who are interested. This is a tradition that was introduced when Marija Slavkovik was our leader.
Lecture topic
The title of the lecture is "Blame it on the algorithm? The influence of feed algorithms on news use and attitudes".
Feed algorithms have been blamed for creating echo chambers and polarizing audiences. But what if the algorithms were never powerful enough to deliver on that threat? And what if users were more open to disagreement than we assumed? In this talk, I present my past, ongoing, and planned research on how algorithms shape our exposure to perspectives we disagree with. I draw on the NEWSREC project to present a more nuanced picture: algorithms matter, but their effects depend on how they are designed, and what they are designed to do. The talk concludes by looking ahead to a potentially far more powerful technology: agentic AI. Is the real echo chamber threat only just arriving? And if so, what can we do about it?
About Erik Knudsen
Erik Knudsen is professor in communication science within media use research. He leads a work package at the MediaFutures Research Centre for Responsible Media Technology and Innovation and is Principal Investigator of the project NEWSREC – The Double-edged Sword of News Recommenders’ Impact on Democracy (awarded by the the highly competitive program Research projects for young talents by the Research Council of Norway).