Detta kandidatarbete fokuserar på ideologisk polarisering som orsak till den stora mängden falsk information som har spridits den senaste tiden. Jag undersöker hur selektiv exponering och filterbubblor har bidragit till att den ideologiska polariseringen har följt med in på webben, och hur nyhetsfeed har agerat som en grogrund för detta. I ett försök till att minska den ideologiska polariseringen i nyhetsfeed skapade jag en webbapplikation i form av ett nyhetsfeed med nyhetsartiklar som med hjälp av algoritmer låter användaren se utanför sin filterbubbla för att balansera nyhetsfeedet mellan flera olika nyhetskällor. / This bachelor thesis focuses on ideological polarization as cause for the vast amount of false information that have been spread lately. I examine how selective exposure and filter bubbles have contributed to the ideological polarization that followed into the web, and how newsfeed have been acting as a breeding ground for this. In an attempt to reduce the ideological polarization in newsfeed I created a web application in the form of a newsfeed with news articles, that with the help of algorithms let the user see beyond its filter bubble to balance the newsfeed between different news sources.

Submitted by Erika Demachki (erikademachki@gmail.com) on 2016-09-09T20:13:04Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Luiz Espíndola de Carvalho Júnior - 2016.pdf: 15198028 bytes, checksum: 7b5fc8e2773e98885ba6164693a0d522 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2016-09-12T14:39:30Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Luiz Espíndola de Carvalho Júnior - 2016.pdf: 15198028 bytes, checksum: 7b5fc8e2773e98885ba6164693a0d522 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-12T14:39:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Luiz Espíndola de Carvalho Júnior - 2016.pdf: 15198028 bytes, checksum: 7b5fc8e2773e98885ba6164693a0d522 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-05-06 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This research intended to identify the musical genres that represent the four most accessible songs on Brazilian Youtube site in the period 2012-2015 , in view of their stylistic peculiarities , creation processes , production, circulation and reception with them involved , searching clarify to what extent are concerned with the mechanisms of the cultural industry and the corporate structure of the youtube site .The analysis and interpretation of musical works and videos that used the representational as a tool (CHARTIER, 2002; MOSCOVICI, 2003), with the hearing and observing "open" the object and use the three levels of analysis proposed by Ferrara (1984) allowed a foundation and methodological approach for the symbolic interaction.By the way, the search for related quantitative data to the results offered by YouTube Rewind Brazil in four years observed , identified that there is a supremacy of the ‘sertanejo universitário’ gender in three of the four songs observed in the ranking, the only song ranked first not was framed in this genre was classified as ‘carioca´s funk’ .In this context the analysis and interpretation could be still observed elements that coincide with practices related to cultural industry, which also pointed to market demands aimed at potential consumers of profiles for implications of this process with the Filter Bubble mentioned by Pariser (2012) that show the interference of technological advances in cyberspace musical movement.Harvey (2005) , Benjamin (2009) and Bauman (2009) has made it possible to realize this process from another angle , the inevitability of their interaction with the historical social setting and cultural postmodern , with the new sensorium mass that identifies their experiences daily with the result of the processes of creation, production, and circulation of the researched musical work . / Essa pesquisa teve como objetivo identificar os gêneros musicais que representam as quatro músicas mais acessadas no site Youtube brasileiro no período de 2012 a 2015, tendo em vista as suas peculiaridades estilísticas, os processos de criação, produção, circulação e recepção com eles envolvidos, visando esclarecer até que ponto estão implicados com os mecanismos da indústria cultural e com a estrutura corporativa do site youtube. A análise e interpretação das obras musicais e dos vídeos, que utilizaram o representacional como instrumento (CHARTIER, 2002; MOSCOVICI, 2003), junto à audição e observação “abertas” do objeto e da utilização dos três níveis de análise propostos por Ferrara (1984), possibilitaram uma fundamentação e abordagem metodológica referentes ao enfoque do simbólico. Por outro lado, a busca de dados quantitativos relacionados aos resultados oferecidos pelo Youtube Rewind Brasil nos quatro anos observados, permitiu identificar que existe uma supremacia do gênero sertanejo universitário em três das quatro músicas observadas do ranking, a única música classificada em primeiro lugar que não se enquadrou nesse gênero foi classificada como funk carioca. Nesse contexto da análise e interpretação puderam ser constatados ainda elementos que coincidem com práticas relacionadas à indústria cultural, o que apontou também para demandas mercadológicas que visam perfis dos consumidores em potencial, para implicações desse processo com o Filtro Invisível mencionado por Pariser (2012), que evidenciam a interferência dos avanços tecnológicos do cyberspace na circulação musical. Harvey (2005), Benjamin (2009) e Bauman (2009) já possibilitaram perceber esse processo sob outro ângulo, na inevitabilidade de sua interação com o cenário sócio histórico e cultural pós-moderno, com o novo sensorium da massa que identifica as suas experiências cotidianas com o resultado dos processos de criação, produção, e circulação da obra musical abordados.

The aim of this thesis is to study how students perceive and handle internet’s continuous flow of information in everyday life, through news report, social media and targeted advertising. By examining the students attitudes and thoughts about the extent to which they find the information they meet relevant this study seeks to understand how they find what is relevant to them and how they limit the intake of information by different combinations of selection processes. For this purpose interviews were carried out with seven university students from different fields and levels. Three categories of theories about selection processes serves as a theoretical framework for the analysis and results. The categories are referred to as external, personalized and personal factors. The external factors include gatekeeping theory, news valuation and agenda theory and the personalized factors include theories about filter bubbles and echo chambers. The personal factors include strategies to avoid information overload such as filtering and withdrawing, it also includes satisficing as a stop rule for information seeking.  The study shows that the three categories of selection processes are affected by emotional factors referred to as simplicity, interest and sensation. These drives the student to get more deeply informed. The students attitudes towards personalized information shows to be divided between if it should be more firmly adapted to each individual, or if that would increase the feeling of being monitored. In the students reflections regarding saved information emerges three feelings of negativity described as reluctance, lack of control and unease. Despite these feelings of negativity the phenomenon is accepted. Seeing that the alternative is disconnecting from modern society and life, acceptance shows to be the most reasonable alternative.

Society is currently finding itself in the middle of an information revolution, and only now begins to realize this fact. The primary currency in the new economy is user data and the enormous value is evident only to companies doing business with them. This thesis is dedicated to the protection of personal data in the context of the currently developing trend of personalization. Author sets out tools that make online tracking possible, compares the legislative regulation of the Czech Republic, the Russian Federation and the United States of America, evaluating the differences, trends, strengths and weaknesses in relation to the practice of creating profiles and behavioural targeting advertising. Subsequently, the author lists the additional risks of this trend for the freedom and privacy, lists general recommendations as well as recommendations for the users themselves to maximize the protection of privacy and personal data.

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.