Have You Thought About This? Trust and Responsibility in News Personalization

Abstract

Personalization is increasingly becoming a familiar concept, regardless of industry. This thesis explores how personalized news platforms can be designed, while fulfilling the news media’s responsibility to society and maintaining the users’ trust. The study is based on the historical development of the news media, and how it has been affected by technology. Further, it is based on research on personalization, its benefits and risks, and users' attitude towards personalization in the news media. To understand users’ behavior and needs, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods like questionnaires and interviews have been used. Based on these insights, three prototypes of a news platform using different personalization tactics were developed. The prototypes were evaluated through user tests with nine participants in total. The third prototype was the final product and was based on the insights and testing of the other prototypes. Inspired by the work of developing the prototypes, along with heuristic evaluations of the three prototypes and basic theory on personalization and the news media, this thesis presents five recommendations which can be used when designing personalized news platforms. The results from the research indicates that users are positive to personalized news platforms, but for the experience to be optimal, there are some recommendations that will be worth following.