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Main Research Tracks News Recommenders in Small Media Markets Recommenders Read More LLMs and Recommenders Recommenders Read More Public Service Media and Platformization Platforms Read More Affiliated projects Elevating Customer Value of media recommendations through Enhanced User Satisfaction and Development Recommenders, User studies Read More Promoting Fairness of the Music Ecosystem in a Platform-Dominated and Post-Pandemic Europe Artificial Intelligence, Copyright, Media Policy, Music Industry, Platforms Read More Public Service Media in the Age of Platforms Platforms, Media Policy Read More Serendipity Engine Recommenders, Artificial Intelligence, Smart City, Diversity and Serendipity Read More Streaming Affordances for small media markets Platforms, Public Service Broadcasting, Streaming Read More Understanding Algorithmic gatekeepers to promote Epistemic welfare Artificial Intelligence, Platforms, Regulation, Media Policy Read More All our affiliated projects are part of the Media Economics & Policy unit at imec-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel . Researchers in this unit work on fundamental and applied research tracks seeking to advance knowledge on how digitalization, internationalization, and platformisation are impacting the business models of traditional media players, how these media players innovate and interact with new players, and how governments contribute to sustaining or strengthening local media ecosystems. The Media Economics & Policy unit is headed by prof. dr. Tim Raats . Click here to learn more about other projects in the Media Economics & Policy unit

Latest updates 20 Jan 2026 Out now: Handbook of Platform Urbanism Online Book Launch for the Handbook of Platform Urbanism Read More 9 Dec 2025 12 PhD positions available The RePim Doctoral Network is looking for 12 PhD positions Read More 15 Sept 2025 Impressions of IBC 2025 Ulysse’s Impressions of the International Broadcasting Convention 2025: Shaping The Future. Read More 21 Jul 2025 AI Summer School 2025 Aina's recap of the AI Summer School at KU Leuven Read More 15 Jul 2025 Report Published: How to Ensure Visibility and Prominence for Media Services of General Interest in Flanders Commissioned by the Flemish Minister of Media, this research report investigates findability, discoverability, and due prominence for audiovisual and auditive media services. Read More 5 Jun 2025 Ciao from EMMA in Rome! Our presentations at the emma Conference 2025 Read More 22 May 2025 Talking about Stakeholder Perspectives at WMEMC Hanne presented her research on stakeholder alignment for news recommender system development Read More 19 May 2025 Second Annual ALGEPI Workshop Insights on AI, Innovation and Media Regulation Read More 31 Mar 2025 Looking back at IUI 2025 Ulysse attended the conference and presented at the AXAI workshop Read More 27 Mar 2025 Policy Brief on Public Service Media in Belgium Findings and recommendations on the organisational and cultural challenges facing PSM in Belgium Read More 4 Feb 2025 #Etmaal2025 Hanne looking back on her presentation on Stakeholder Alignment for News Recommender System (NRS) Implementation Read More 3 Feb 2025 Call for Papers Special Issue Special Issue on Public Service Media in the Age of Platforms Read More 27 Jan 2025 New Policy Brief: Streaming Public Service Television in the Age of Platforms Evaluating Public Service Media (PSM) in-house video-on-demand (VoD) services Read More 4 Nov 2024 New policy brief: International versus local VOD In a new policy brief and webinar, we present the findings of research on motivations of Flemish viewers Read More 1 Nov 2024 New report of the Fair MusE project New report "From Value Networks for Recorded Music to Music Ecosystem" Read More 28 Oct 2024 Diversity in VOD services: Seminar highlights from Madrid Throwback on the international seminar on diversity and VOD services Read More 23 Oct 2024 Looking back at RecSys 2024 Sharing our reflections on the ACM RecSys Conference 2024 Read More 16 Oct 2024 New research network for VOD research methods A new website with all there is to know about Video-on-Demand (VoD) research methods Read More 8 Oct 2024 The RecSys Conference 2024 Our contributions to the 18th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems Read More 1 Oct 2024 Our presentations at ECREA The SRP team presented their work at the ECREA 2024 Conference Read More

Research Team Tim Raats Associate Professor Annelien Smets Research Professor Jeroen Peeters Senior Researcher Manager Pieter Van der Elst PhD Researcher Brett Binst PhD Researcher Pieter Ballon Full Professor Heritiana Ranaivoson Research Professor Adelaida Afilipoaie Postdoctoral Researcher Hanne Vandenbroucke PhD Researcher Dongxiao Li PhD Researcher Wendy Van den Broeck Associate professor Catalina Iordache Guest Professor Lien Michiels Postdoctoral Researcher Ulysse Maes PhD Researcher Aina Errando PhD Researcher

Publications Filter by Tags Select Tags Not that personal: A qualitative study of personalization practices on six European public streaming service Münter Lassen, J., Iordache, C., Martin, D., Bruun, H., Świtkowski, F., Nucci, A., & Johnson, C. (2026). Not that personal: A qualitative study of personalization practices on six European public streaming service. Television & New Media , 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/15274764251415356 Read More Dubbing wars: localisation strategies of transnational streaming services for Spanish ‘original’ works Gallo, P., & Iordache, C. (2026). Dubbing wars: localisation strategies of transnational streaming services for Spanish ‘original’ works. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies , 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856526141627 Read More Welcome to the Metrics Jungle: Organizational Stakeholder Perspectives on Evaluation of News Recommender Systems in Industry Vandenbroucke, H., Michiels, L., & Smets, A. (2025). Welcome to the Metrics Jungle: Organizational Stakeholder Perspectives on evaluation of news recommender systems in industry. ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems, Highlights of RecSys ’24. https://doi.org/10.1145/3778173 Read More From Experimentation to Strategy: The Ambidextrous Balancing Act of Developing News Recommender Systems Vandenbroucke, H., & Smets, A. (2025). From experimentation to strategy: the ambidextrous balancing act of developing news recommender systems. Journal of Media Business Studies , 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/16522354.2025.2590880 Read More Not One News Recommender To Fit Them All: How Different Recommender Strategies Serve Various User Segments Vandenbroucke, H., Maes, U., Michiels, L., & Smets, A. (2025). Not One News Recommender To Fit Them All: How Different Recommender Strategies Serve Various User Segments. In 19th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems Proceedings . ACM. Read More Interface real estate: Amazon Prime and visibility politics van Es, K., & Iordache, C. (2025). Interface real estate: Amazon Prime and visibility politics. Critical Studies in Television , 0 (0). https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020251375211 Read More Catching the waves: The case of VRT's digital-first audio strategy Van der Elst, P., Iordache, C., & Raats, T. (2025). Catching the waves: The case of VRT’s digital-first audio strategy. European Journal of Communication . https://doi.org/10.1177/02673231251370877 Read More Close Contact for Context: Qualitative Methodological Considerations for Assessing Prominence and Discoverability Iordache, C., Leiva, M. T. G., & Raats, T. (2025). Close Contact for Context: Qualitative Methodological Considerations for Assessing Prominence and Discoverability. Media Industries, 12(1), 111-132. https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/mij/article/id/7625/ Read More Challenges and requirements for implementing due prominence: aligning stakeholder interests in Flanders Van der Elst, P., Afilipoaie, A., & Raats, T. (2025). Challenges and requirements for implementing due prominence: aligning stakeholder interests in Flanders. Frontiers in Communication, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2025.1569132 Read More Rethinking Transparency in Public Service Media: a multidimensional framework for better governance Van den Bulck, H., Horowitz, M., & Raats, T. (2025). Rethinking Transparency in Public Service Media: a multidimensional framework for better governance. Frontiers in Communication , 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2025.1569363 Read More Exploring Ethical and Regulatory Challenges of AI Integration in European Union Newsrooms Lefèvre, B., Errando, A., Afilipoaie, A., Ranaivoson, H., & Wiart, L. (2025). Exploring ethical and regulatory challenges of AI integration in European Union newsrooms. Media Studies , 16 (31), 31-55. Read More Intended, afforded, and experienced serendipity: overcoming the paradox of artificial serendipity Smets, A. Intended, afforded, and experienced serendipity: overcoming the paradox of artificial serendipity. Ethics Inf Technol 27 , 33 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-025-09841-6 Read More

< Back Understanding Algorithmic gatekeepers to promote Epistemic welfare ALGEPI Technological and economic developments have led to the availability of an overwhelming quantity of digital content. Therefore, it has become crucial, in particular for media content providers, to incorporate algorithmic gatekeepers, which filter, rank and recommend content. Are these algorithmic gatekeepers undermining media’s contribution to epistemic welfare? In ALGEPI, we start from the novel concept of epistemic welfare, defined as the individuals’ right to know and be exposed to trustworthy, independent and diverse information while respecting individual rights to their own data. By connecting legal, political, technological and sociocultural perspectives, we will develop a conceptual framework for epistemic welfare. This framework will allow us to understand the effects of algorithmic gatekeepers on epistemic welfare. The new interdisciplinary research program will build on multi-method empirical research applied to algorithmic gatekeepers. Thanks to the theoretical and empirical findings, we will be able to develop normative instruments to align algorithmic gatekeeping with epistemic welfare. Taking the novel concept of epistemic welfare as a starting point allows all project partners to embark on a joint, integrated exploration of the concept. This may lead to a paradigmatic shift in the conceptualization of the impact of algorithmic gatekeepers in media sectors, proposing to expand the notions of media pluralism and consumer welfare to epistemic welfare. Researchers on this project Aina Errando PhD Researcher Adelaida Afilipoaie Postdoctoral Researcher Heritiana Ranaivoson Research Professor Consortium partners Namur Digital Institute HUMAN-IST ReSIC Center de recherche Namur Digital Institute 1/6 Tags Artificial Intelligence, Platforms, Regulation, Media Policy Previous Next

< Back Catalina Iordache Guest Professor catalina.iordache@vub.be Coming from an Eastern European background, my life completely changed in the early 1990’s when the colours and fast-moving images of cable TV reached our living room, and I experienced an instant fascination with film, television programmes and music videos. Through my studies, I became interested in the market forces behind audiovisual media and the cross-border flow of content. At SMIT, I have the opportunity to apply qualitative methods in investigating the production and distribution of content, as well as its consumption by diverse audiences. I have been working at imec-SMIT-VUB since 2014, where I obtained my PhD on the transnational flow of media content in the online environment in 2022. I am currently conducting postdoctoral research on the platformisation of Public Service Media (PSM) and am also a Guest Professor and co-titular of the course Media, Culture and Globalisation Theories, for the Digital Media in Europe Master’s programme at the VUB. During my time at SMIT, I have also conducted research on the topics of media literacy, digital literacy and e-inclusion, and acted as Teaching Assistant for the Bachelor in Social Sciences programme. Before joining academia, I worked as a project manager in the cultural field with a community arts organisation based in Edinburgh. I then moved to Brussels and followed the international MSc in Communication Studies at the VUB. I also hold a BA in International Relations, European Studies. Visit my research profile

< Back Serendipity Engine SBO We increasingly rely on algorithmically generated recommendations to navigate in both online and offline contexts: listening to music on streaming platforms, reading news online, or following recommendations about activities and events in your favorite city. These recommender systems help us dealing with the abundance of available information, but at the same time raise questions about their impact on individual citizens and society. Many advocate for designs for serendipity in recommenders, but what does this mean in practice? While serendipity is generally understood as a beneficial design principle ought to deliver societal value, putting it into practice still presents major challenges. The Serendipity Engine project sets out to address these challenges and support societal stakeholders in designing recommender systems to foster serendipity in public contexts. Researchers on this project Lien Michiels Postdoctoral Researcher Brett Binst PhD Researcher Annelien Smets Research Professor Consortium partners SBO_ IDLAB.png SBO_ ADREM.png SBO_ IMEC.png SBO_ IDLAB.png 1/3 Tags Recommenders, Artificial Intelligence, Smart City, Diversity and Serendipity Previous Next

< Back Join ALGEPI's workshop on Epistemic Welfare! 21 Mar 2024 What are the conditions under which the use of algorithms can contribute to, or threaten, epistemic welfare? “Epistemic Welfare“ stands as a cornerstone concept for understanding how individuals and groups interact with knowledge in today’s digital society. How do we define it? What is the conceptual and methodological framework for the concept? ALGEPI is organising its first annual workshop on the 12th of April 2024 from 10:00h to 13:00h CET to discuss what are the conditions under which the use of algorithms can contribute to, or threaten, epistemic welfare and how can we translate this into actionable parameters or metrics. Join us in the discussion! 🕙 Time: 10:00h to 13:00h CET. 🗓️ Date: 12th of April 2024 📍 Venue: Collegium Veteranorum (109-20) – Sint-Michielsstraat 2-4 , 3000 Leuven ( 02.10 – MGR. O. ROMEROZAAL ). Are you planning to attend? Places are limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis so please let us know by sending us an email ! Registrations will close on the 5th April 2024. In the meantime, if you would like to learn more, have a look at our concept note dissecting the concept of epistemic welfare ! ➡︎ Read the full programme here . Previous Next

< Back Looking back at IUI 2025 31 Mar 2025 Ulysse attended the conference and presented at the AXAI workshop Pristine beaches, a bright turquoise sea, impressive rock formations and pink flamingo’s… Cagliari has it all. Despite the undeniable beauty of Sardinia’s capital, the most memorable element of my stay was however related to Intelligent User Interfaces. You read that right: I was lucky enough to attend the yearly conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI) - which turned out to be an exceptionally inspirational and instructive experience. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that my interest was sparked by the central theme - the conjunction between Artificial Intelligence (AI), and how User Interfaces (UI) can optimally accommodate for them. But the real experience went above and beyond my initial expectations. In this article, I break it down in 3 key elements. 1. The overarching theme: AI should benefit the user Believe it or not, but the word “user” was mentioned even more often than “LLM” (see paragraph 3; “There is no escaping LLMs”). Shouldn’t be too surprising for a conference focusing on user interfaces, right? Well, it struck me that this community really tries to model user preferences and -needs accurately, for which it draws a lot more often from cognitive and behavioral research than is common in computer science. As I’m also considering to conduct user experiments to evaluate the effects of explanations on the complex experience of the system, this focus meant that I learned a lot about suitable methodologies. During the course of the week, my belief in the importance of putting the user central has been fortified as well. Now more than ever, it is important to guard user agency and autonomy, and to prevent over-reliance on increasingly capable and connected AI systems. The current generative AI boom raises a lot of concerns among various affected stakeholders. Sometimes, it feels like these tools are at least partly exploitative in nature - a concern that was vividly expressed by professor Giulio Jacucci in his opening keynote at the HAI-GEN workshop. 2. The AXAI workshop: Explanations should be adaptive to be impactful Throughout the presentations in the AXAI (Adaptive eXplainable AI) workshop session, I learned that adaptivity can be geared towards multiple users and use cases, and is therefore often interpreted differently by various researchers and fields. Some focus on adapting explanations to the user at hand, in terms of content, or complexity. Others consider adaption to context. In any case, it seems that LLMs offer a great avenue to increase the level of adaptation in many cases, although this may spark concerns regarding trustworthiness. Related to that topic, I presented our paper ( link ), co-authored with Lien and supervised by Annelien. What set it apart was mainly its ridiculously long title: “Mitigating Misleadingness in LLM-Generated Natural Language Explanations for Recommender Systems: Ensuring Broad Truthfulness Through Factuality and Faithfulness”. Not exactly the title of Sabrina Carpenter’s next hit, but it certainly sparked some lively discussion. I opened my presentation with a straightforward example of gender bias in a job recommender: it generated the exact same “high-quality” explanation for two different users—a female designer recommended design jobs and a male designer steered toward management roles. This example served as a way to illustrate the benefit of incorporating uncertainty and interactive counterfactuals into explanations, to enable greater transparency and scrutability. I recognized a similar call for communicating uncertainty as a means to obtain transparency in Prof. Q. Vera Liao’s keynote on Thursday. I was also pleased to see Prof. Turchi present “Talking Back - human input and explanations to interactive AI systems“, an inspiring study on interactive counterfactuals using SHAP values as sliders. It sparked my interest in further exploring the integration of interactive explanations with SHAP in content-based recommender systems. My presentation then proceeded with stating the difference between explanations and justifications, and how LLMs enable the generation of plausible justifications at scale. This can pose a problem of unfounded trust in recommender systems, especially since earlier research has shown that the mere presence of explanations already enhances the trust and item acceptance. This underscores the importance of truthful explanations - which brought me to the core of my presentation: to assess “truthfulness”, we should agree on a definition and an operationalization. This is where I propose to frame truthfulness as “providing accurate information”, consisting of both factuality and faithfulness. Unfortunately, we often see that different research disciplines consider different aspects of truthfulness: while computer science works often focus on factuality, social science merely investigates faithfulness. Luckily, as Krzysztof Gajos mentioned in Wednesday’s morning panel, the field of IUI is well-positioned to bridge these different perspectives into truly useful interfaces. Slide from AXAI presentation: "Defining truthfulness" I proceeded with mentioning the 4 evaluation perspectives to assess explanation quality in recommender systems, as proposed by Ge et al., while also mentioning the 7 explanation goals as defined by Tintarev in 2007. I was curious if the audience would deem this evaluation method useful outside of recommender systems as well, and it indeed proved to be fertile ground for discussion. While most workshop participants agreed that the dimensions could be useful, the explanation goal of “persuasion” was contested, as this should be seen as a side-effect or external result, not something to optimize for. To end my presentation, I went over some possible mitigation strategies that focus on prompting, interface and model-based approaches (all are further discussed in the paper). Slide from AXAI presentation: "Mitigation strategies for LLM-generated misleading explanations" Besides the "Talking back" paper, the presentations most relevant to my area of interest in this session were "Toward a Human-Centered Metric for Evaluating Trust in Artificial Intelligence Systems" and "'Loss in Value': What it reveals about WHO an explanation serves well and WHEN". By the way, in the morning, I attended another great workshop: HAI-GEN, in which the shift to an intent-based paradigm was stressed multiple times. I was very happy to hear this, as I’m also convinced that we are effectively moving to a new way of interaction with our systems, were we move from command-based interaction towards a more natural way of communicating our goals to digital systems. As far as I’m aware, the term “intent-based interaction” was coined by Jakob Nielsen in a now-famous blog post . I find this very inspiring and consider it one of the main guiding threads for my research. There is no escaping LLMs As announced in the opening talk, I indeed noticed that LLMs were ubiquitous. From self-improving LLM-agents that learn to play Minecraft, to LLMs that optimize meeting schedules: a lot of authors (including myself) reported on the promises and perils of incorporating language models to enhance interactivity, accessibility or automation. The popularity of LLMs should however not be mistaken for devotion. Many times I realized, as a scientific community, we have the privilege to be critical, and look beyond the hype - so that we can report on both the opportunities as well as the limitations of LLMs. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be excited about the seemingly endless possibilities of this new technology of course. But as was rightfully highlighted by Prof. Burnett, we should consider it in a responsible way. By doing so, we can provide valuable insights that help to steer the development and implementation of AI-models beyond purely profit-driven goals. Conclusion: An inspiring conference at the heart of my research interests This post could have been much longer if I had included all my notes. I'll end it here for now, but in the coming weeks, I hope to frequently revisit these notes to reignite the inspiration I felt from attending the conference, listening to speakers, admiring impressive research projects, and meeting some of the most influential HCI researchers. Two memorable encounters will forever remain in my mind: the first was a lunch conversation with Professor Ted Selker, the creator of the well-known red pointing stick on my ThinkPad (though there's a more familiar term for it; if you know, you know). The second? A close encounter with a startled yet adorably cute beaver during a run around Cagliari’s stunning salt mines. I hope to reconnect with many of the inspiring individuals I met at the conference in the future. In the meantime, let’s continue our ongoing pursuit of the perfect intelligent interface. Previous Next

< Back Webinar: Streaming in Vlaanderen 1 Oct 2024 Ontdek alle trends en inzichten in ons webinar! Benieuwd naar hoe Vlamingen hun favoriete content streamen? Sluit op 31 oktober aan bij het 1e proeftuin webinar! We introduceren de eerste inzichten uit ons project 'Streaming Affordances voor kleine mediamarkten', ondersteund door VLAIO en de Vlaamse Minister van Media. Tijdens het webinar krijg je een diepgaand overzicht van: De voorkeuren en motivaties van Vlaamse streamers Hoe technologie, context en content hun kijkgedrag beïnvloeden De resultaten van interviews, dagboekonderzoeken en een grootschalige survey Mis deze kans niet om waardevolle inzichten op te doen over de snel veranderende wereld van streaming. Schrijf je vandaag nog in en ontdek hoe de Vlaming met media omgaat! Details: 📆 Datum: 31 oktober 2024 🕚 Tijd: 11u-12u 💻 Online Meld je aan voor deze webinar via onderstaande link: Registreren Previous Next

< Back Heritiana Ranaivoson Research Professor heritiana.renaud.ranaivoson@vub.be While digital technologies have been here for quite some time already, I am still amazed by the changes they keep triggering in the cultural and media industries and how they allow (or constrain) these industries to innovate. I am particularly interested in the impact these changes have on the diversity of the content these industries produce and recommend. And eventually the policies that are needed in this new environment. I analyse these changes using my background in industrial economics, business modelling and media policy, with a peculiar interest in combining quantitative and qualitative research. I obtained my PhD in Economics (Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne) in 2008 on cultural diversity in the recording industry. I also studied Economics and Management at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan (France). Since then, and notably since I joined imec-SMIT-VUB in 2010, I have led several research projects at international and national levels for the European Commission ( H2020 , study contracts ), the Unesco , Google , etc. I have published extensively in the fields of cultural and media diversity , media innovation , media policy, audiovisual platforms , and the economic impact of digital technologies on creative industries . Visit my research profile

< Back Wendy Van den Broeck Associate professor wendy.van.den.broeck@vub.be As the world of media and television is ever changing, it’s something I’ll never grow tired of. My first research project was on interactive digital television and it is unbelievable how rapid the industry and the technology have evolved since. New services like time-shifted viewing, Netflix, personalised advertising and immersive media applications have entered our everyday lives. At the same time, these trends are often not as disruptive as expected. For example when iDTV was introduced, it was announced that broadcasters would disappear and the 30 second commercial would die a silent death. Users are often surprising in their habits and practices. On the one hand, old habits die hard and user patterns tend to change slowly. On the other hand, surprising or unexpected usage of technology can lead to fascinating new developments. That is why user research is my biggest passion. I like to interact with users and unravel their motivations and expectations. I really believe in our living lab approach that puts the user in the centre of the design and development process. By involving users from the very early stage of an innovation process, we can help to develop technological services and products that are really user-friendly and society proof. This also helps the media industry to face the different challenges and disruptions they have to cope with today. I am currently head of the Living Lab cluster at SMIT and assistant professor at the communications studies department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel where I teach several international and national courses, most of them related to research methodology. My current research projects relate to personalised and immersive media and include the EU projects Immersia TV , CPN and HRadio. I joined SMIT in 2003, after completing a master in communication sciences (VUB-2002), and obtaining a postgraduate diploma in management and economics (VUB-Solvay-2003) and a teaching degree (VUB-2003). During my time at SMIT, I finished my PhD in communication sciences in 2010 entitled: “From analogue to digital: the silent (r)evolution? A qualitative study on the domestication of interactive digital television in Flanders”. Visit my research profile