1st Symposium on Diversity of News Diets and its Effect on Democratic Citizenship
The KNAW Early career partnership & Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
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The European Union is protecting our right to access diversity of news diets online. Why and how? This is what media experts, political communication researchers and journalist scholars debated during our First Symposium on Diversity of Media Diets and its Democratic Effects, which took place at Het Trippenhuis, Amsterdam on April 4th, 2025 (check the full program below).
The event gathered 43 participants and was organized by Silvia Majo-Vazquez and Mariken van de Velden from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, jointly with Felicia Loecherbach and Nicolas Mattis from the UVA.
The Symposium was possible thanks to the grant received from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and during its different panels the following key questions were discussed:
- What are the effects of the new Media Freedom Act when it comes to the right of media customization on democratic citizenship?
- How can we study online news exposure patterns to understand unintended consequences of the right of media customization on democratic citizenship?
- What are the effects of exposure to diversity of news in the current media ecosystem?
The video below summarizes some of the main take away messages of the event. Shortly, a technical report will be also published here with a comprehensive analysis of the debate held during the Symposium.
Technical Report
1st Symposium on the Diversity of News Media Diets and its Effect on Democratic Citizenship
Programme:
April 4th, 2025
8:45-9:15 Badge pickup
9:15-9:30 Welcome by the Meeting Committee
9:30-10:15 Keynote address and Q&A
Audrius Perkauskas, Deputy Head of Unit, Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology Unit I.1 – Audiovisual and Media Services Policy. European Commission (Belgium)
Title: “What’s in the European Media Freedom Act for healthy media diets?”
10:15- 10:45 Coffee
10:45-12:30 Panel 1 – Interventions to Promote Diversity of News Exposure across Platforms
Laurens Naudts, AI, Media and Democracy Lab/IViR, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Title: “A Right to Constructive Optimisation: A Public interest approach to recommender systems in the Digital Services Act”
Sinéad Crowley, director of media development Comisiún na Meán, (Ireland)
Title: Local Democracy and Courts Reporting Schemes
Eleonora Mazzoli, Senior Policy Manager Ofcom (United Kingdom)
Title: “Navigating the online news landscape: how to promote diversity and trust?”
SofĂa Verza, Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom, European University Institute (Italy)
Title: “Accessing diverse news: the role of art. 18 EMFA for content moderation of media service providers”
Lana Askari, The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (Netherlands)
Title: “Media Matters: Towards new safeguards for their democratic functions”
Chair: SĂlvia MajĂł-Vázquez, Assistant Professor Vrije University Amsterdam (VU) and Research Associate Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford (Netherlands)
12:30-13:30 Lunch
13.30-14:30 Panel 2 – Effects, Diversity of News Exposure and Democracy
Michael Reiss is a postdoc researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) (Germany)
Title: “Conceptualizing News Consumption and Diversity and Proposing a Normative Turn for Research”
Nicolas Michael Mattis, Post-Doctoral Researcher UVA (Netherlands)
Title: “It ain’t easy: Using normatively motivated news diversification to facilitate policy support, tolerance, and political participation”
Rupert Kiddle, PhD Candidate, VU (Netherlands)
Title: “Osmotic News Recommendation Facilitating Serendipitous Information Discovery in Digital Journalism”
Chair: Mariken van der Velden, PhD Associate Professor of Political Communication and Research Director Communication Science, VU (Netherlands)
14:30-14:45 Coffee
14.45-15:45 Panel 3 –Measures, Tools and Data to Analyse Diversity of News Exposure
E. (Elif) Kılık, Lecturer & Researcher (UvA) PhD candidate UAntwerp
Title: “Diversity Monitor: Monitoring diversity of actors in Dutch and Flemish media”
Wouter van Atteveldt, Professor of Computational Communication Science & Political Communication, VU (Netherlands)
Title: “New tools and data structures to measure online filter bubbles”
Daniel Stegmann, Research Associate, University of Mainz (Germany)
Title: “Revisiting exposure diversity. What do we measure when we measure exposure diversity?”
Chair: Felicia Loecherbach, Assistant Professor Political Communication and Journalism
University of Amsterdam, UvA (Netherlands)
15:45-16:30 Final Keynote Address
Yael de Haan, Professor Applied Sciences, Research Centre Journalism in Digital Transition, University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, Professor Local Public Broadcasting, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Title: “Media diversity at a local level demands a public perspective”
16.30 – 16:45 Closing Remarks
Organisational committee:
SĂlvia MajĂł-Vázquez
Assistant Professor, VU and Research Associate RISJ University of Oxford
Mariken van der Velden
Associate Professor, Research Director, VU
Nicolas Michael Mattis
Postdoctoral Researcher, UVA
Felicia Loecherbach
Assistant Professor, UvA
Julia Morauw
Student Assistent, VU
Funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Symposium on Diversity of News Media Diets 