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< Back #Etmaal2025 4 Feb 2025 Hanne looking back on her presentation on Stakeholder Alignment for News Recommender System (NRS) Implementation After a great first day of interesting sessions, good talks and a fun party, it was my turn to present some findings at Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap . This annual conference unites communication scholars from Belgium and the Netherlands and the 2025 edition took place in the beautiful city of Bruges. I could write pages about the picturesque setting and the striking juxtaposition of the historic nature of this city and the innovative, future-oriented discussions we had there. However, let’s get to the point: My presentation on the adoption of news recommender systems (NRS) by legacy, commercial news publishers in Belgium and the Netherlands, and the multi-stakeholder complexities that influence this process. Why Is the Adoption of News Recommender Systems Lagging Behind? While academic research has advanced significantly in the domain of news recommenders and personalization, the practical implementation of NRS in legacy news organizations remains limited. There exists a significant gap between the assumed widespread integration of recommendation algorithms and the reality of their adoption in established news platforms. My research suggests that a key reason for this disconnect lies in the intricate, multi-stakeholder environment in which NRS are designes and implemented . The Multi-Stakeholder Challenge Within news organizations, multiple actors with distinct institutional logics shape the adoption process. Three dominant logics are at play: The journalistic logic , which prioritizes editorial independence, public service, and the integrity and diversity of news content. The commercial logic , focused on revenue generation and return on investment. The tech logic , driven by algorithmic efficiency, and optimization of the NRS functionalities. These different stakeholder interestes and values create tensions and trade-offs : How do news organizations balance algorithmic curation with journalistic gut-feeling for selection and prioritization of news content? How can they ensure that business interests do not overshadow editorial considerations? And how can resources be allocated effectively to maximize the potential of NRS without undermining traditional newsroom workflows? My research highlights the crucial role of the Product Owner (PO) in navigating these tensions. Rather than a single PO mediating in between, all actors, we observe a network of multiple POs , each acting as an “interpreter” or “translator” for the institutional logic they represent. These POs play a vital role in facilitating communication, aligning perspectives, and crafting a strategic roadmap for NRS adoption. Presentation Slide: The complex multi-stakeholder environment with multiple PO's at the center. Two Key Stakeholder Alignment Strategies To ensure smoother adoption of NRS, POs employ two crucial stakeholder alignment strategies: Knowledge Management Strategy The POs facilitate communication between the newsroom, business unit, and tech teams, ensuring knowledge sharing and developing a common understanding. They use educational tools such as “dummy-proof” presentations and explainer videos to foster a shared understanding, mitigating misunderstandings and increase stakeholder buy-in. Showcase Success Strategy To demonstrate the value of NRS, POs present performance metrics through dashboards. However, simply displaying data is not enough. We underscore the importance of literacy within newsrooms as without a good understanding of data insights and the foundational skills to interpret dashboards, stakeholders cannot meaningfully engage with performance metrics or make informed strategic decisions. Presentation Slide: Two Stakeholder Alignment Strategies Moving Forward: A Call for Media Management Studies While advancements from computational sciences and normative narratives in journalism studies are exploring the possibilities of news personalization, media management perspectives remain underexplored. My presentation at Etmaal highlights the need for further studies that bridge the gap between theoretical research and practical implementations. The discussions and feedback I received at Etmaal reaffirmed the relevance of this research, and I look forward to continuing this conversation in future collaborations. For those interested in the role of recommender systems in news media, let’s get in touch! Previous Next

< Back 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 Despite advances in news recommender systems (NRS) research, their application in news organisations remains limited, hampered by practical obstacles and organisational challenges. This study applies the multi-stakeholder framework alongside ambidexterity theory to analyse the complex decision-making dynamics in applying NRS within two large commercial news organisations. Based on 11 in-depth interviews with different stakeholders, two “balancing acts” emerged. The first is stakeholder alignment through two strategies: knowledge management with dummy-proof presentations and “showcasing success” to help increase stakeholder buy-in for NRS. The second balancing act is managing trade-offs between exploration and exploitation in a roadmap developed by the multidisciplinary team of product owners (POs), ensuring a balanced allocation of resources for NRS innovation and optimisation. This research shows how organisational ambidexterity supports successful technology integration and provides insights for implementing emerging technologies in complex multi-stakeholder news media environments. Recommender Systems, Stakeholders, Newsmedia Previous Read the article 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 Piecing the puzzle of VOD offerings: A comparison of eight US and local services in Flanders Iordache, C., Raats, T., Pakvis, M., & Asmar, A. (2023). Piecing the puzzle of VOD offerings: A comparison of eight US and local services in Flanders. Journal of Digital Media and Policy , 14 (3), 357 - 376. https://doi.org/10.1386/jdmp_00134_1 The study conducts a catalogue analysis that zooms in on the small market of Flanders (Belgium), and the content strategies of the eight most popular local and US-based players in the market. Through the comparative analysis, we investigate three main directions. First, we analyse the similarities and differences in the catalogue offerings of US and local video-on-demand (VoD) services. Second, we delve into the strategies of local players as they compete with US streamers and other legacy players. Third, we analyse the share and the characteristics of the Flemish titles on offer. The data was collected in the spring of 2022 and consists of 13,500 title entries. The findings point to a set of complex market dynamics. Local services and US-based players are competing and collaborating to create a jigsaw puzzle of on-demand offerings, through various strategies of complacency, resistance, differentiation and diversification/mimicry. Platforms Previous Read the article Next

< Back Annelien Smets Research Professor Annelien.Smets@vub.be Annelien is a senior researcher at SMIT in the Media Economics and Policy unit. Her research centers around personalization and recommender systems, and their value in media markets. Annelien holds a PhD in Media and Communication Studies (VUB) on the topic of serendipity in recommender systems and smart cities. She holds a master’s degree in Information Management (2016) and Artificial Intelligence (2017) from KU Leuven. Currently, Annelien is Research Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where she teaches courses on media economics, digital economics, digital business models, and digital innovation management. She is also co-chair of the Serendipity Academic Researchers Network, part of the Serendipity Society. Visit my research profile

< Back Publishing public service media on demand: A comparative study of public service media companies’ editorial practices on their VoD services in the age of platformization Bruun, H., Johnson, C., Lassen, J. M., Nucci, A., Raats, T., & Świtkowski, F. (2025). Publishing public service media on demand: A comparative study of public service media companies’ editorial practices on their VoD services in the age of platformization. Journal of Digital Media & Policy . This article contributes to the emerging empirical research on the editorial practices of video-on-demand (VoD) publishing in European public service media (PSM). It presents results from a comparative study of the editorial practices visible on the VoDs from ten PSM companies across six countries: United Kingdom, Belgium, Poland, Italy, Canada and Denmark. The aim of the article is to map and compare the editorial practices in the ‘prime space’ of the VoD services and the ‘prime time’ of the companies’ main linear channels. The analysis is based on data from a sample week of 13–19 November 2023. The article contributes to research addressing the key issue of universality in terms of content and discusses the conceptualizations of the audience that seem to be at work in the transition towards an online PSM identity. Public Service Media, Platforms Previous Read the article Next

< Back We're in this together: a multi-stakeholder approach for news recommenders Smets, A., Hendrickx, J., & Ballon, P. (2022). We're in this together: a multi-stakeholder approach for news recommenders. Digital Journalism , 10 (10), 1813-1831. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.2024079 News recommenders are attracting widespread interest in scholarly work. The current research paradigm, however, holds a narrow (mostly user-centered) perspective on the recommendation task. This makes it difficult to understand that their design is in fact the result of a negotiation process among multiple actors involved, such as editors, business executives, technologists and users. To remedy this, a multi-stakeholder recommendation paradigm has been suggested among recommender systems scholars. This work sets out to explore to what extent this paradigm is applicable to the particular context of news recommenders. We conducted 11 interviews with professionals from three leading media companies in Flanders (Belgium) and find that the development of news recommenders is indeed characterized by a negotiation process among multiple stakeholders. However, our results show that the initial multi-stakeholder framework is not adequately accommodating some of our findings, such as the existence of preconditions, the role of product owners, and the indirect involvement of particular stakeholders. Based on our analysis, we suggest an elaborated framework for multi-stakeholder news recommenders that can contribute to scholarship by providing a multi-sided perspective towards the understanding of news recommenders. Recommender Systems, Newsmedia, Stakeholders Previous Read the article Next

< Back It’s (Not) All About That CTR: a Multi-Stakeholder Perspective on News Recommender Metrics Vandenbroucke, H., & Smets, A. (2024). It’s (Not) All About That CTR: a Multi-Stakeholder Perspective on News Recommender Metrics. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems. Recommender systems are increasingly used by news media organizations. Existing literature examines various aspects of news recommender systems (NRS) from a computational, user-centric, or normative perspective. Yet research advocates studying the complexities of real-world applications around NRS. Recently, a multi-stakeholder approach to NRS has been adopted, allowing to understand different stakeholder perspectives on NRS development and evaluation within the news organization. However, little research has been done on the different key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics considered valuable by different stakeholders. Based on 11 interviews with professionals from two commercial news publishers, this paper demonstrates that stakeholders prioritize distinct KPIs and metrics related to the reach-engagement-conversion-retention funnel. The evaluation of NRS performance is often limited to short-term metrics like CTR, overlooking the multiplicity of stakeholders involved. Our findings reveal how different purposes, KPIs, and metrics are valued from the journalistic, commercial, and tech logic. In doing so, this paper contributes to the multi-stakeholder approach to NRS, advancing our understanding of the real-world complexity of NRS development and evaluation. Recommender Systems, Newsmedia Previous Read the article Next

< 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

< Back Pieter Van der Elst PhD Researcher pieter.van.der.elst@vub.be Pieter Van der Elst joined imec-SMIT as a PhD candidate in 2023. Researching on the broader topic of algorithmic recommenders in the Flemish media industry, his thesis focuses on how the public service broadcaster VRT positions itself within a contemporary media context. His academic interests lie mainly in media economics and datafication of media. Before his start at imec-SMIT he briefly worked as a consultant for one of the leading social bureaus for artists (SBK’s) in the Flemish cultural industry, providing services exclusively to VRT. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and subsequently a Master’s degree in Communication Studies. Visit my research profile

< Back Ulysse Maes PhD Researcher ulysse.jan.l.maes@vub.be Ulysse joined SMIT in September 2023 as a PhD researcher. His focus is on comprehending the multifaceted challenges and opportunities presented by the evolving landscape of AI, particularly in news and video recommender systems. He holds a master’s degree in Business and Information Systems Engineering, where he graduated magna cum laude. His academic pursuits took him to SKEMA Business School in Antibes, where, during an Erasmus exchange, he deepened his knowledge on entrepreneurship in an international setting. Notably, his master’s thesis was dedicated to the development of a user-oriented chatbot enhancing DMN execution. This was followed by his successful completion of a Postgraduate Degree in Tech Innovations in Ventures and Teams. During that year, he co-founded Amodamo , a platform endorsing responsible fashion, and established Scribewave , an online transcription service specialised in converting speech-to-text in local languages. Visit my research profile

< Back How Should We Measure Filter Bubbles? Michiels, L., Vannieuwenhuyze, J., Leysen, J., Verachtert, R., Smets, A., & Goethals, B. 2023. How Should We Measure Filter Bubbles? A Regression Model and Evidence for Online News. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems. News media play an important role in democratic societies. Central to fulfilling this role is the premise that users should be exposed to diverse news. However, news recommender systems are gaining popularity on news websites, which has sparked concerns over filter bubbles. More specifically, editors, policy-makers and scholars are worried that these news recommender systems may expose users to less diverse content over time. To the best of our knowledge, this hypothesis has not been tested in a longitudinal observational study of real users that interact with a real news website. Such observational studies require the use of research methods that are robust and can account for the many covariates that may influence the diversity of recommendations at any given time. In this work, we propose an analysis model to study whether the variety of articles recommended to a user decreases over time in such an observational study design. Further, we present results from two case studies using aggregated and anonymized data that were collected by two western European news websites employing a collaborative filtering-based news recommender system to serve (personalized) recommendations to their users. Through these case studies we validate empirically that our modeling assumptions are sound and supported by the data, and that our model obtains more reliable and interpretable results than analysis methods used in prior empirical work on filter bubbles. Our case studies provide evidence of a small decrease in the topic variety of a user's recommendations in the first weeks after they sign up, but no evidence of a decrease in political variety. Recommender Systems Previous Read the article Next