Igor and Gabriela are fictional characters created by media researcher Dr. Jonathon Hutchinson. In his current project, Jonathon tries to uncover patterns in YouTube’s recommender system. For that purpose he created individual YouTube accounts for five different fictional characters and observed how differently YouTube’s algorithm treats its users. Igor, a 40-something male living in Russia and Gabriela, a grandmother living in Brazil, are exposed to radically different video content when navigating the platform.

In the BredowCast Jonathon talks to Johanna Sebauer about researching digital spheres as an ethnographer, about how YouTube’s recommender system might influence people’s information behavior and what public service broadcasters could do to uphold information diversity.

Jonathon Hutchinson is a lecturer in online communication and media at the University of Sydney and currently a visiting fellow at the Leibniz-Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI).

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Links

Guest: Dr. Jonathon Hutchinson

https://www.leibniz-hbi.de/en/staff/jonathon-hutchinson

http://jonathonhutchinson.com.au/

https://twitter.com/dhutchman

Publications

You can find all publications by Jonathon on his website

http://jonathonhutchinson.com.au/publications/

Host: Johanna Sebauer

https://www.leibniz-hbi.de/en/staff/johanna-sebauer

Twitter - @JohannaSebauer: https://twitter.com/JohannaSebauer

Contact

Leibniz-Institut für Medienforschung | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI)

https://www.leibniz-hbi.de/en

The Institute on Twitter

https://twitter.com/BredowInstitut

E-Mail to the Podcast-Team