News Recommendation Systems in the Era of Information Overload

Abstract

The internet has reconstructed information boundaries in the modern world, and along with mobile internet has become the most important source of information for the public. Simultaneously, the internet has brought humanity into an era of information overload. In response to this information overload, recommendation systems backed by big data and smart algorithms have become highly popular on information platforms on the internet. There have already been many studies that attempted to improve and upgrade recommendation algorithms from a technical perspective, but the field lacks a comprehensive reflection on news recommendation algorithms. In our study, we summarize the principles and characteristics of current news recommendation algorithms and discuss “unexpected consequences” that might arise from these algorithms. In particular, technical bottlenecks include cold starts and data sparsity, and moral bottlenecks are presented in the form of information imbalance and manipulation. These problems may cause new recommendation systems to become a “warped mirror”.