Abstract
Urbano Reviglio elaborates in this chapter on a framework for the design of serendipity in human–computer interactions and digital environments, especially for personalised online media and (news) recommender systems. His contribution is a theoretical and interdisciplinary investigation of digital serendipity in the context of personalization systems. Serendipity is deeply involved in various sub-domains of information science, such as information retrieval, information literacy, knowledge management and knowledge acquisition. It is considered a design principle able to reduce the risks of redundant and overly consonant information consumption (also referred to as filter bubbles and echo chambers). Yet, Reviglio shows that the theoretical and ethical analysis of the concept is still limited. This article attempts to fill the gap by providing a taxonomy of serendipity as it might be used in the design, or found through the use of personalization systems. Based on an interdisciplinary literature review, distinctions between pseudo-personalised and hyper-personalised serendipity, between individual and political serendipity, and between fake and manipulative serendipity are described. Finally, Reviglio discusses how this taxonomy can encourage the design of more ethically sound digital systems that incorporate serendipity.
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Notes
- 1.
Take two paradigmatic examples of personalization online: Facebook and Youtube. On Facebook, the posts encountered by the average user everyday are approximately 350 on at least 1.500 potential posts. Thus, roughly 25% are algorithmically filtered and prioritised and 75% are ultimately hidden. While Youtube’s algorithm already drives more than 70% of the time spent in the platform. Indeed, 90% of the ‘related content’ in the right bar is personalised (see Reviglio 2019).
- 2.
These are two intertwined phenomena; at the individual level filter bubbles and at the group and social level echo chambers. While the first refers to the fact that a user continues to receive and consume content that reinforces their opinions and interests, the latter refers to a group situation where information is uncritically spread and amplified, whereas dissonant information is mostly ignored. These concepts are, however, poorly defined and, in fact, are used more as simplifying metaphors (Bruns 2019).
- 3.
For example, information behavior research approaches serendipity as a quality of someone. Research relating to recommender systems (RSs) and search engines, on the other hand, approach serendipity primarily as a quality of an event or something. And, lastly, information science and human–computer interaction describe it as an experience or a process.
- 4.
Infotainment, a portmanteau of information and entertainment, refers to ‘soft news’ that aims to attract viewers with short attention spans. More often than not, such information is centered on celebrity culture and laden with infotainment content that tends to simplify and sensationalise information.
- 5.
In a sense, this observation is intimately connected with the provocation of the great artist Pablo Picasso who famously said already in 1968: “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers”.
- 6.
As a matter of fact, the metaphor ‘surfing the Internet’ was chosen to refer to a fun feeling and “something that would evoke a sense of randomness, chaos, and even danger” (Polly 1992).
- 7.
In RSs discussions these metrics are generally intended as following:
• Novelty is when an item is unknown to the user.
• Relevance is when an item is useful or meaningful to the user.
• Unexpectedness is when an item is not intentionally looked for by the user or it is different from the user’s expectations.
• Diversity is when there is difference between the current recommendation and the user’s profile or the system’s prior recommendations.
- 8.
In e-commerce, the long-tail refers to the idea that there are a lot of unpopular products that can be offered to the interested ones. Likewise, the long tail content refers to the "lesser known" content in the system, that is less popular and therefore seen by less users. It is a form of hyper-personalization of unpopular items that could be serendipitous to a user.
- 9.
Ambient intelligence refers to the eventual future vision in which automatic smart online and offline environments interact with each other and take an unprecedented number of decisions for us and about us in order to cater to our inferred preferences. It may actually represent a new paradigm in the construction of knowledge (Hildebrandt and Koops 2010).
- 10.
Pentland (2015) anticipates the emergence of a Comtian “social physics”, the possibility to create a data-driven mathematical model of social behaviours from big data. The broader challenge is indeed to design serendipity at the intersection of physical and digital environments.
- 11.
- 12.
Individuals have different “orders” of preferences; “first-order preference” is expressed in how we behave in the moment that a stimulus or temptation affects our consciousness. In contrast, “second-order preference” is the choice we make for ourselves upon further reflection, generally separated from the immediate temptation and it has to do with an “aspirational self”.
- 13.
‘Diversity’ in media discussions has several sub-dimensions, among them, media ownership diversity, source diversity, content diversity, cultural diversity, viewpoint diversity, exposure diversity and diversity experience (what are you exposed to and what you actually consume).
- 14.
Kairos is an ancient Greek word that traditionally is associated with the homonymous Greek divinity, personification of the “opportune moment”.
- 15.
“Ethics blue washing” is defined as “the malpractice of making unsubstantiated or misleading claims about, or implementing superficial measures in favour of, the ethical values and benefits of digital processes, products, services, or other solutions in order to appear more digitally ethical than one is (Floridi 2019, p.3)”.
- 16.
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights can prove an important point of departure to realise democratic values in the personalised media landscape (Eskens et al. 2017). This also declares that:
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
- 17.
The first director-general of the BBC John Reith argued that public service media should be targeted at everybody, irrespective of their status or location, with a mixed programming created to the highest possible standard, a miscellany of genres in which every listener could find his or her particular interests. Ultimately, he believed that “few know what they want, and very few know what they need. […] In any case it is better to over-estimate the mentality of the public than to under-estimate it” (Reith 1924, p.34 in Savage et al. 2020).
- 18.
Universalism “indicates an assumption and claim that all the diversity of reality as a whole can be traced to a single principle or law of order. From this, it follows, that ideas, ideals, rights, and obligations apply in principle to all human beings. Universalism is therefore a perspective that prioritises the whole of an entity above singularity, and generality above specificity. The concept contends that some principles and norms are valid for all human beings.” (Thomas 2020, p.26 in Savage et al. 2020).
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Acknowledgements
Research for this article has been partially funded by the project "“Public Perception of Algorithms in Society: Accounting for the Algorithmic Public Opinion—ALGOCOUNT” (2020–2022), funded by Fondazione Cariplo. More information is available at: www.algocount.org.
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Reviglio, U. (2023). Serendipity as a Design Principle of Personalization Systems—Theoretical Distinctions. In: Copeland, S., Ross, W., Sand, M. (eds) Serendipity Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33529-7_8
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