#26: Diversity in Recommender Systems with Sanne Vrijenhoek
02/19/25 • 95 min
In episode 26 of Recsperts, I speak with Sanne Vrijenhoek, a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Information Law and the AI, Media & Democracy Lab. Sanne’s research explores diversity in recommender systems, particularly in the news domain, and its connection to democratic values and goals.
We dive into four of her papers, which focus on how diversity is conceptualized in news recommender systems. Sanne introduces us to five rank-aware divergence metrics for measuring normative diversity and explains why diversity evaluation shouldn’t be approached blindly—first, we need to clarify the underlying values. She also presents a normative framework for these metrics, linking them to different democratic theory perspectives. Beyond evaluation, we discuss how to optimize diversity in recommender systems and reflect on missed opportunities—such as the RecSys Challenge 2024, which could have gone beyond accuracy-chasing. Sanne also shares her recommendations for improving the challenge by incorporating objectives such as diversity.
During our conversation, Sanne shares insights on effectively communicating recommender systems research to non-technical audiences. To wrap up, we explore ideas for fostering a more diverse RecSys research community, integrating perspectives from multiple disciplines.
Enjoy this enriching episode of RECSPERTS - Recommender Systems Experts.
Don't forget to follow the podcast and please leave a review
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (03:24) - About Sanne Vrijenhoek
- (14:49) - What Does Diversity in RecSys Mean?
- (26:32) - Assessing Diversity in News Recommendations
- (34:54) - Rank-Aware Divergence Metrics to Measure Normative Diversity
- (01:01:37) - RecSys Challenge 2024 - Recommendations for the Recommenders
- (01:11:23) - RecSys Workshops - NORMalize and AltRecSys
- (01:15:39) - On the Different Conceptualizations of Diversity in RecSys
- (01:28:38) - Closing Remarks
Links from the Episode:
- Sanne Vrijenhoek on LinkedIn
- Informfully
- MIND: MIcrosoft News Dataset
- RecSys Challenge 2024
- NORMalize 2023: The First Workshop on the Normative Design and Evaluation of Recommender Systems
- NORMalize 2024: The Second Workshop on the Normative Design and Evaluation of Recommender Systems
- AltRecSys 2024: The AltRecSys Workshop on Alternative, Unexpected, and Critical Ideas in Recommendation
Papers:
- Vrijenhoek et al. (2021): Recommenders with a Mission: Assessing Diversity in News Recommendations
- Vrijenhoek et al. (2022): RADio – Rank-Aware Divergence Metrics to Measure Normative Diversity in News Recommendations
- Heitz et al. (2024): Recommendations for the Recommenders: Reflections on Prioritizing Diversity in the RecSys Challenge
- Vrijenhoek et al. (2024): Diversity of What? On the Different Conceptualizations of Diversity in Recommender Systems
- Helberger (2019): On the Democratic Role of News Recommenders
- Steck (2018): Calibrated Recommendations
General Links:
- Follow me on LinkedIn
- Follow me on X
- Send me your comments, questions and suggestions to [email protected]
- Recsperts Website
In episode 26 of Recsperts, I speak with Sanne Vrijenhoek, a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Information Law and the AI, Media & Democracy Lab. Sanne’s research explores diversity in recommender systems, particularly in the news domain, and its connection to democratic values and goals.
We dive into four of her papers, which focus on how diversity is conceptualized in news recommender systems. Sanne introduces us to five rank-aware divergence metrics for measuring normative diversity and explains why diversity evaluation shouldn’t be approached blindly—first, we need to clarify the underlying values. She also presents a normative framework for these metrics, linking them to different democratic theory perspectives. Beyond evaluation, we discuss how to optimize diversity in recommender systems and reflect on missed opportunities—such as the RecSys Challenge 2024, which could have gone beyond accuracy-chasing. Sanne also shares her recommendations for improving the challenge by incorporating objectives such as diversity.
During our conversation, Sanne shares insights on effectively communicating recommender systems research to non-technical audiences. To wrap up, we explore ideas for fostering a more diverse RecSys research community, integrating perspectives from multiple disciplines.
Enjoy this enriching episode of RECSPERTS - Recommender Systems Experts.
Don't forget to follow the podcast and please leave a review
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (03:24) - About Sanne Vrijenhoek
- (14:49) - What Does Diversity in RecSys Mean?
- (26:32) - Assessing Diversity in News Recommendations
- (34:54) - Rank-Aware Divergence Metrics to Measure Normative Diversity
- (01:01:37) - RecSys Challenge 2024 - Recommendations for the Recommenders
- (01:11:23) - RecSys Workshops - NORMalize and AltRecSys
- (01:15:39) - On the Different Conceptualizations of Diversity in RecSys
- (01:28:38) - Closing Remarks
Links from the Episode:
- Sanne Vrijenhoek on LinkedIn
- Informfully
- MIND: MIcrosoft News Dataset
- RecSys Challenge 2024
- NORMalize 2023: The First Workshop on the Normative Design and Evaluation of Recommender Systems
- NORMalize 2024: The Second Workshop on the Normative Design and Evaluation of Recommender Systems
- AltRecSys 2024: The AltRecSys Workshop on Alternative, Unexpected, and Critical Ideas in Recommendation
Papers:
- Vrijenhoek et al. (2021): Recommenders with a Mission: Assessing Diversity in News Recommendations
- Vrijenhoek et al. (2022): RADio – Rank-Aware Divergence Metrics to Measure Normative Diversity in News Recommendations
- Heitz et al. (2024): Recommendations for the Recommenders: Reflections on Prioritizing Diversity in the RecSys Challenge
- Vrijenhoek et al. (2024): Diversity of What? On the Different Conceptualizations of Diversity in Recommender Systems
- Helberger (2019): On the Democratic Role of News Recommenders
- Steck (2018): Calibrated Recommendations
General Links:
- Follow me on LinkedIn
- Follow me on X
- Send me your comments, questions and suggestions to [email protected]
- Recsperts Website
Previous Episode
#25: RecSys 2024 Special
In episode 25, we talk about the upcoming ACM Conference on Recommender Systems 2024 (RecSys) and welcome a former guest to geek about the conference.
Enjoy this enriching episode of RECSPERTS - Recommender Systems Experts.
Don't forget to follow the podcast and please leave a review
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (01:56) - Overview RecSys 2024
- (07:01) - Contribution Stats
- (09:37) - Interview
Links from the Episode:
Papers:
General Links:
- Follow me on LinkedIn
- Follow me on X
- Send me your comments, questions and suggestions to [email protected]
- Recsperts Website
Next Episode
#27: Recommender Systems at the BBC with Alessandro Piscopo and Duncan Walker
In episode 27 of Recsperts, we meet Alessandro Piscopo, Lead Data Scientist in Personalization and Search, and Duncan Walker, Principal Data Scientist in the iPlayer Recommendations Team, both from the BBC. We discuss how the BBC personalizes recommendations across different offerings like news or video and audio content recommendations. We learn about the core values for the oldest public service media organization and the collaboration with editors in that process.
The BBC once started with short video recommendations for BBC+ and nowadays has to consider recommendations across multiple domains: news, the iPlayer, BBC Sounds, BBC Bytesize, and more. With a reach of about 500M+ users who access services every week there is a huge potential. My guests discuss the challenges of aligning recommendations with public service values and the role of editors and constant exchange, alignment, and learning between the algorithmic and editorial lines of recommender systems.
We also discuss the potential of cross-domain recommendations to leverage the content across different products as well as the organizational setup of teams working on recommender systems at the BBC. We learn about skews in the data due to the nature of an online service that also has a linear offering with TV and radio services.
Towards the end, we also touch a bit on QUARE @ RecSys, which is the Workshop on Measuring the Quality of Explanations in Recommender Systems.
Enjoy this enriching episode of RECSPERTS - Recommender Systems Experts.
Don't forget to follow the podcast and please leave a review
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (03:10) - About Alessandro Piscopo and Duncan Walker
- (14:53) - RecSys Applications at the BBC
- (20:22) - Journey of Building Public Service Recommendations
- (28:02) - Role and Implementation of Public Service Values
- (36:52) - Algorithmic and Editorial Recommendation
- (01:01:54) - Further RecSys Challenges at the BBC
- (01:15:53) - Quare Workshop
- (01:23:27) - Closing Remarks
Links from the Episode:
- Alessandro Piscopo on LinkedIn
- Duncan Walker on LinkedIn
- BBC
- QUARE @ RecSys 2023 (2nd Workshop on Measuring the Quality of Explanations in Recommender Systems)
Papers:
- Clarke et al. (2023): Personalised Recommendations for the BBC iPlayer: Initial approach and current challenges
- Boididou et al. (2021): Building Public Service Recommenders: Logbook of a Journey
- Piscopo et al. (2019): Data-Driven Recommendations in a Public Service Organisation
General Links:
- Follow me on LinkedIn
- Follow me on X
- Send me your comments, questions and suggestions to [email protected]
- Recsperts Website
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