Exploring users’ desire for transparency and control in news recommender systems: A five-nation study

Abstract

As news organizations increasingly adopt AI-driven technologies like news recommender systems (NRS), notions of responsible artificial intelligence (AI) design have attracted significant scholarly and public attention. Particularly, transparency and user control are crucial for the fulfilment of democratic freedoms and human rights. However, users’ desire for such features in NRS has not yet been sufficiently examined. Therefore, this study set out to comparatively examine how individual-level characteristics contribute to the desirability of transparency and user control in NRS across five nations (Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States; N = 5079). We show that the desire for features of responsible NRS is shaped by individual-level characteristics like NRS-related concerns and algorithmic awareness but does not always manifest equally across different national settings. By considering the audience’s view on features of responsible NRS, our study can be a stepping stone towards responsible journalistic AI.