Abstract

The role news recommenders can play in stimulating news diversity is receiving increasing amounts of attention. Democratic theory plays an important role in this debate because it helps explain why news diversity is important and which kinds of news diversity should be pursued. In this article, I observe that the current literature on news recommenders and news diversity largely draws on a narrow set of theories of liberal and deliberative democracy. Another strand of democratic theory often referred to as ‘agonism’ is often ignored. This, I argue, is a mistake. Liberal and deliberative theories of democracy focus on the question of how political disagreements and conflicts can be resolved in a rational and legitimate manner. Agonism, to the contrary, stresses the ineradicability of conflict and the need to make conflict productive. This difference in thinking about the purpose of democratic politics can also lead to new ways of thinking about the value of news diversity and role algorithmic news recommenders should play in promoting it. The overall aim of the article is (re)introduce agonistic theory to the news recommender context and to argue that agonism deserves more serious attention.

摘要

新闻推荐者在刺激新闻多样性方面可以发挥的作用正受到越来越多的关注。民主理论在这场辩论中发挥了重要作用，因为它有助于解释为什么新闻多样性很重要，以及应该追求哪种新闻多样性。在这篇文章中，我观察到当前关于新闻推荐和新闻多样性的文献主要借鉴了一套狭隘的自由民主和协商民主理论。通常被称为“竞争主义”的另一股民主理论经常被忽视。我认为，这是一个错误。自由主义和协商民主理论关注的是如何以合理和合法的方式解决政治分歧和冲突的问题。相反，Agonism 强调冲突的根深蒂固和制造冲突的必要性富有成效的。这种对民主政治目的的思考差异也可能导致对新闻多样性的价值以及算法新闻推荐者在促进它方面应该发挥的作用的新思考方式。本文的总体目标是（重新）将竞争理论引入新闻推荐环境，并论证竞争值得更认真的关注。