Serendipity innebär ett överraskande, lyckligt utfall som introducerar en ny upptäckt av värde för användaren. Till skillnad från dagens algoritmer, som ofta enbart ger rekommendationer baserat på relevans, innefattar design för serendipity fler komponenter för att göra innehåll på sociala medier intressant för användaren. Serendipity beskrivs därför i flera studier som ett lovande sätt för att öka chansen att användare tar del av innehållet. I dagens sociala medier introduceras allt kraftfullare algoritmer för att personalisera innehåll. Detta kan medföra att användaren inte ser tillräckligt varierad information, och riskerar att få en dålig förståelse om varierande åsikter. För att förebygga detta ämnar studien undersöka hur design för serendipity kan användas för att öka användares bredd av exponering av innehåll, även kallat exponeringsvariation. Baserat på den identifierade litteraturen gällande serendipity formulerades tre designförslag, vilka sedan designades in i en prototyp. Designförslagen berör behovet av ett varierat innehåll genom användningen av existerande sociala kontaktnät som kan användas för att uppnå detta, behovet av ett upplevt värde för användaren och användarens behov av kontroll. Då tidigare studier gällande serendipity har identifierat en brist på utvärderingar med användare skapades en prototyp över ett alternativt informationsflöde på Facebook. Informationsflödet har konstruerats i syfte att exponera användarna för nytt och oväntat innehåll och skapa förutsättningarna för att serendipity ska uppstå. Informationsflödet har sedan utvärderats med användare och visar att de upplevt variationen som positiv samt en känsla av kontroll kopplat till större valfrihet. Användningen av designförslagen har således visat hur de kan främja användares exponeringsvariation och även möjliggör för serendipity att inträffa. / Serendipity means a surprising, happy outcome that introduces a new discovery of value for the user. Unlike today's algorithms, which often only provide recommendations based on relevance, serendipity design includes more components to make social media content interesting to the user. Serendipity is therefore described in several studies as a promising way to increase the chance that users take part in the content. Today's social media introduces increasingly powerful algorithms for personalizing content. This can result in users not seeing sufficiently diverse information, and a risk of gaining a poor understanding of varying opinions. To prevent this, we intend to investigate how design for serendipity can be used to increase users' breadth of content exposure, also called diversity exposure. Based on the identified literature regarding serendipity, three design proposals were formulated, which were then designed into a prototype. The design proposals concern the need for a diverse content through the use of the users existing social networking contacts that can be used to achieve this, the need for a perceived value for the user and the user's need for control. As previous studies regarding serendipity have identified a lack of evaluations with users, a prototype was created of an alternative information feed on Facebook. The feed has been designed with the aim of exposing users to novel and unexpected content and creating the conditions for serendipity to arise. The information feed has since been evaluated with users and shows that they have experienced the variation as positive and a sense of control linked to greater freedom of choice. The use of the design proposals has thus shown how they can promote users' diversity exposure and also enable serendipity to occur.

The political polarization is considered to have increased in recent decades, which is considered a threat to democracy. Polarization is the process by which the normal diversity of differences in a society conforms more closely to a single dimension, where people perceive and describe politics and society in terms of "us" and "them". There are two distinct forms of political polarization, which are affective and ideological polarization. Ideological polarization is the difference between political beliefs, attitudes and positions of political opponents and affective polarization asses the extent to which people like their political allies and dislike their political opponents. A higher level of polarization can be beneficial to society, as it can contribute to higher levels of political participation and a perception that there are choices. However, this process can also entail disadvantages for democracy, by increasing the centralization of power and making citizens more dissatisfied. In addition, there are also described interpersonal implications of polarization, which include a reluctance to interact with and dehumanization of poltical opponents. Previous research that investigated the political polarization on social media has mainly focused on Twitter and Facebook, thus it was considered relevant to what the polarization looks like on Reddit instead. This platform has a different structure and also describes itself as being at the forefront of the internet. It was focused on two communities, where on community was skeptic and the other convinced of the climate issue. It could be seen here that there were primarly traces of affective polarization, as there was a certain reluctance to interact with one's political opponents. The mechanism of polarization that could mainly be deciphered was confirmation bias, as a preference for interaction with those with like-minded views could be made clear. Traces of echo chambers and filter bubbles could also be discerned, which are alos mechanisms that can also lead to further polarization.

With the help of Programmatic Advertising and the resulting personalized content, consumers can be targeted precisely and with the help of Artificial Intelligence. The associated use of customer data creates ethical conflicts. Therefore, the research question is asked: How does Programmatic Advertising influence consumer's data security and diversity of opinion and what effect does this have on the further development of the technology? For the purpose of elaborating the research problem a literature analysis and expert interviews are carried out. The analysis shows that Programmatic Advertising has already taken up the majority of digital advertising activities. This results in advantages for advertisers, since consumers can be addressed in a targeted manner. Nevertheless, this provokes data law issues and the demand for more data security for the individual customer, which, among other things, is given more attention by big tech companies. Due to the constant change within this trend, new possibilities arise, such as contextual targeting, in order to continue to do an efficient display of advertising. Nonetheless, this work calls for more regulations to be able to give customers a better overview and control of their used data and to avoid restricted diversities of opinion, which can be promoted through microtargeting and therefore the addressed display of content. The prospects of Programmatic Advertising, however, are predicted with a steady increase because other areas within the media landscape will be pervaded by this technology in the future. / Med hjälp av programmatisk reklam och artificiell intelligens får kunder och individer reklam som är specifikt utformade för just dem. Användningen av underliggande användardata ger upphov till etiska dilemman. Således, har vi följande problemformulering: Hur påverkar programmatisk reklam användarnas data och åsikter, och vilken effekt har detta på den fortsatta utvecklingen av området? Med avsikt att vidareutveckla problemformuleringen utfördes expertintervjuer samt en litteraturstudie. Analysen visar att programmatisk reklam utgör majoriteten av all digital marknadsföring. Detta har resulterat i fördelar för marknadsförare, ty användarna kan bli bemötta mer precist. Icke desto mindre, medför detta legala problem relaterat till användardata och ett ökat kraf av dataskydd för användaren, vilket är något som får stort fokus av stora tech företag. På grund av den konstanta utvecklingen av denna metod, föds nya möjligheter, exempelvis "kontextuell riktad marknadsföring", för att fortsätta vara en effektiv marknadsföringsmetod. Därmed, redogör denna rapport för en mer reglerad spelplan där användarna får en bättre överblick och kontroll över hur deras användardata utnyttjas, samt en mindre inskränkt åsiktspåverkan, vilket är något som skulle kunna ske genom knappnålsfin riktad marknadsföring. Dock är utvecklingen för programmatisk reklam förutspådd ljus, då andra områden inom medielandskapet kommer att genomsyras av denna teknologi i framtiden

Denna studie ämnar att undersöka studenters attityder till utvecklingen av personalisering inom webbaserade tjänster och utforska skillnader och likheter mellan studenternas attityder. Studiens empiriska material är insamlat genom fem kvalitativa intervjuer och en webbenkät med 72 respondenter. Studien behandlar fördelar och nackdelar med personalisering, möjligheter att förhindra personalisering och möjliga konsekvenser av personalisering. Majoriteten av studenterna har en positiv attityd till personalisering av webbaserade tjänster. Resultatet visar att studenterna var mest positivt inställda till personalisering av streamingtjänster och minst positiva till personalisering av nyhetstjänster. Jag fann att användare i stor utsträckning inte anser att nyhetstjänster bör vara personaliserade. Det visade sig finnas en tydlig skillnad mellan studenternas kännedom om olika verktyg som kan användas för att förhindra personalisering. Ju mer teknisk utbildning som studenterna läser, desto bättre kännedom hade studenterna om verktygen. Resultatet visade även att en stor del av studenterna önskade att de kunde stänga av personaliseringsfunktionen på tjänster. Personalisering har blivit en naturlig del av användarnas vardag och att majoriteten av användarna inte har tillräcklig kunskap om fenomenet och därför intar de en passiv attityd och undviker att reflektera närmare över personaliseringen och dess möjliga konsekvenser. / This essay aims to study student’s attitudes towards web personalization and explore where the student’s attitudes differ and converge. The empirical materials of the study where assembled by the usage of five qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey with 72 respondents. The study discusses the pros and cons, the ability to constrain web personalization and possible effects and outcomes of web personalization. The majority of the students have a positive attitude towards web personalization. The students were most positive towards personalization of streaming services and least positive towards personalization of media channels that output news. There was an explicit difference between the students’ knowledge of the possibilities to constrain web personalization through the usage of different extensions and tools. Those students who studied a more technical program showed more knowledge of extensions and tools that can be used to prevent or constrain web personalization. The results also showed that the over all students desire more control over web personalization and demand a function where the personalization of web services could be turned off. The study resulted in the findings that web personalization has become a part of the users every-day life and that the students do not have enough knowledge of web personalization which have led to a passive attitude towards it.

This thesis is about the phenomenon filter bubble and how it affects the participant democracy. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how participant democracy is presented together with the filter bubbles in articles of filter bubbles. The questions that is answered inthis thesis is: In which way is filter bubble described in the Swedish newspapers “Dagens Nyheter” and “Svenska Dagbladet”? How is participant democracy presented in relation tofilter bubbles? The results show us that the Swedish newspapers DN and SvD is presenting the filter bubbles in their articles and has different arguments that goes within the participant democracy.

Today, it has become a natural part of life for many people to share personal information and turn to search engines and social media as they search and seek information on the internet. This study aims to investigate how individuals are affected by Big Data in their interactions with social media and to understand how individuals relate to personalization of Big Data, digital identity, agency and how they share their own personal data. This has been researched through a case study involving qualitative interviews and experiments. The result of the research shows that personalization of Big Data on social media has an impact on individuals in their ever yday lives. The research from this case study shows a certain negative attitude towards personalization on social media and that there is so me awareness of the companies agency on the internet, this does not affect individuals in taking any actions. This leads to the conclusion that personalization is to some extent a desired function. / Idag har det blivit en självklarhet för många att dela med sig av personlig information på internet och vända sig till sökmotorer och sociala medier när de letar och söker information. Studien syftar till att undersöka hur individer påverkas av Big Data i sin interaktion med sociala medier och att förstå hur individer förhåller sig till personalisering av Big data, digital identitet, aktörers makt och hur de tänker kring delning av personlig data. Detta studeras genom en fallstudie där kvalitativa intervjuer och experiment. Resultatet från studien visar att personalisering av Big Data på sociala medier påverkar individer och deras digitala användning i vardagen. Studien visar en viss negativ inställning till personalisering på sociala medier och på viss medvetenhet kring aktörernas makt på internet, detta påverkar inte individerna att göra aktiva handlingar. Detta leder till slutsatsen att personalisering av Big Data i viss mån är en accepterad funktion, även om det innebär en förlorad makt över sin digitala användning.

This study investigates the possibility of implementing national psychological defence measures utilizing social media. These measures are understood as an exercise of political power and are contextualised in the contemporary global information arena using Castells theory of communication power in the network society, while employing PSYOPS methodology to further understand the tactical dimensions. It also attempts to evaluate the prevalence of ”filter bubbles” and the potential hindrance such may be to successful implementation. Results show that key audiences can be reached and effectively influenced through the use of social media advert targeting systems and open source, fact-based information campaigns.

Participatory culture inside a filter bubble – A content analysis of the network society Twitch.tv’s external communication. The aim of this essay was to study how user-generated content is being used and how it is presented by Twitch Interactive, Inc. in its external communication, more specifically how the discourse of this content is shaped on Twitter. To gather the information needed a quantity based content analysis was made, ranging from 1-31st of October 2015. From this data patterns where detected and a discourse analysis based on Berglez version of van Dijks model was conducted on six of the Twitter posts that followed said pattern. This was done to answer how the discourse was shaped and what the consequences could be of using such a pattern. Analyzing the results was done using theory from strategic marketing researchers such as Larsåke Larsson, Lars Palm, Ulf Dahlqvist and Magnus Linde. Furthermore theorist like Gripsrud, Pariser, Lindgren, Jenkins, Ford and Green were used to describe and analyze the field of culture, more specifically participatory and popular culture. The conclusion of the study was that Twitch representation of user-generated material and the culture it represents was unjustified and could be seen as a filter bubble. The results showed that the majority of content was young white male gamers where as other research on the field of gaming culture shows a more equal split between genders. The individuals that where represented in the content could be seen as objects of admiration and association. Discussion led to the belief that Twitch may not possess the power to change to discourse due to the strong economic need of the consumers. This need was concluded to arise from the fact that the platform and its culture is much like participatory culture and where this culture has been taken to a commercial level.

Surprise is an important component of serendipity. In this research, we address the problem of measuring the capacity of a recommender system at embedding surprise in its recommendations. We show that changes in surprise of an item owing to the growth in user experience, as well as to the increase in the number of items in the repository, are not taken into account by the current metrics and evaluation methods. As a result, in so far as the time elapsed between two measurements grows, they become increasingly incommensurable. This poses as an additional challenge in the assessment of the degree to which a recommender is exposed to unfavourable conditions, such as over-specialisation or filter bubble. We argue that a) surprise is a finite resource in any recommender system, b) there are limits to the amount of surprise that can be embedded in a recommendation, and c) these limits allow us to create a scale up in which two measurements that were taken at different moments can be directly compared. By adopting these ideas as premises, we applied the deductive method to define the concepts of maximum and minimum potential surprises and designed a surprise metric called \"normalised surprise\" that employs these limits. Our main contribution is an evaluation method that estimates the normalised surprise of a system. Four experiments were conducted to test the proposed metrics. The aim of the first and the second experiments was to validate the quality of the estimates of minimum and maximum potential surprise values obtained by means of a greedy algorithm. The first experiment employed a synthetic dataset to explore the limits to surprise to a user, and the second one employed the Movielens-1M to explore the limits to surprise that can be embedded in a recommendation list. The third experiment also employed the Movielens-1M dataset and was designed to investigate the effect that changes in item representation and item comparison exert on surprise. Finally, the fourth experiment compares the proposed and the current state-of-the-art evaluation method in terms of their results and execution times. The results obtained from the experiments a) confirm that the quality of the estimates of potential surprise are adequate for the purpose of evaluating normalised surprise; b) show that the item representation and comparison model that is adopted has a strong effect on surprise; and c) indicate an association between high degrees of surprise and negatively skewed pairwise distance distributions, and also indicate a significant difference in the average normalised surprise of recommendations produced by a factorisation algorithm when the surprise employs the cosine or the Euclidean distance / A surpresa é um componente importante da serendipidade. Nesta pesquisa, abordamos o problema de medir a capacidade de um sistema de recomendação de incorporar surpresa em suas recomendações. Mostramos que as mudanças na surpresa de um item, devidas ao crescimento da experiência do usuário e ao aumento do número de itens no repositório, não são consideradas pelas métricas e métodos de avaliação atuais. Como resultado, na medida em que aumenta o tempo decorrido entre duas medições, essas se tornam cada vez mais incomensuráveis. Isso se apresenta como um desafio adicional na avaliação do grau em que um sistema de recomendação está exposto a condições desfavoráveis como superespecialização ou filtro invisível. Argumentamos que a) surpresa é um recurso finito em qualquer sistema de recomendação; b) há limites para a quantidade de surpresa que pode ser incorporada em uma recomendação; e c) esses limites nos permitem criar uma escala na qual duas medições que foram tomadas em momentos diferentes podem ser comparadas diretamente. Ao adotar essas ideias como premissas, aplicamos o método dedutivo para definir os conceitos de surpresa potencial máxima e mínima e projetar uma métrica denominada \"surpresa normalizada\", que emprega esses limites. Nossa principal contribuição é um método de avaliação que estima a surpresa normalizada de um sistema. Quatro experimentos foram realizados para testar as métricas propostas. O objetivo do primeiro e do segundo experimentos foi validar a qualidade das estimativas de surpresa potencial mínima e máxima obtidas por meio de um algoritmo guloso. O primeiro experimento empregou um conjunto de dados sintético para explorar os limites de surpresa para um usuário, e o segundo empregou o Movielens-1M para explorar os limites da surpresa que pode ser incorporada em uma lista de recomendações. O terceiro experimento também empregou o conjunto de dados Movielens-1M e foi desenvolvido para investigar o efeito que mudanças na representação de itens e na comparação de itens exercem sobre a surpresa. Finalmente, o quarto experimento compara os métodos de avaliação atual e proposto em termos de seus resultados e tempos de execução. Os resultados que foram obtidos dos experimentos a) confirmam que a qualidade das estimativas de surpresa potencial são adequadas para o propósito de avaliar surpresa normalizada; b) mostram que o modelo de representação e comparação de itens adotado exerce um forte efeito sobre a surpresa; e c) apontam uma associação entre graus de surpresa elevados e distribuições assimétricas negativas de distâncias, e também apontam diferenças significativas na surpresa normalizada média de recomendações produzidas por um algoritmo de fatoração quando a surpresa emprega a distância do cosseno ou a distância Euclidiana

Copyright is conventionally justified as an incentive to produce and disseminate works of authorship. We can justify and theorise copyright more richly, not least because empirical evidence does not support the incentive narrative. Rather than focussing on quantitative matters such as the number of works incentivised and produced, we should consider copyright's qualitative influence on culture. A threshold objection to such an approach is the risk of cultural paternalism. This objection can be overcome. Rather than specifying paternalistic standards of merit for works, we can target the conditions under which their creation and consumption takes place. I argue, firstly, that we should adopt the following high-level principles: (i) that the conditions of creation and consumption of works should be conducive to democratic deliberation (democracy) and (ii) that they should facilitate the development of human capabilities (autonomy). Secondly, I propose that we pursue three mid-level objectives, which are helpful indicia of democracy and autonomy: - a fair and wide distribution of communicative and cultural power (inclusiveness); - diversity in the content and perspectives available to the public (diversity); and - conditions that permit authors and users of works to engage rigorously with the conventions of the media in which they operate (rigour). It is often said that copyright obstructs important qualitative objectives, like freedom of expression, and that we could better pursue these goals by weakening copyright and relying on non-proprietary alternatives. My approach produces a more optimistic, but also more complicated, view of copyright. While copyright's qualitative influence is not optimal, reductions in the strength and scope of copyright sometimes produces conditions and incentive structures that are worse for inclusiveness, diversity and rigour than stronger copyright. For example, both attention and wealth are highly concentrated in networked information economies driven by free sharing of content, and this is bad for diversity or inclusiveness. Online business models, based on surveillance of users' consumption of free works, are corrosive of autonomy and democracy. Merely removing copyright-based restrictions on the sharing of works is not a panacea for copyright's ills. A qualitative theory such as mine equips us to better understand and calibrate more richly the trade-offs involved in copyright policy decisions, and encourages us to treat copyright as part of a broader, qualitatively-oriented information and cultural policy.