Funding
The project ‘Automated Publics: Personalized News Media – Collective Concerns?’ has received a grant of 6.1 million Danish kroner from the Independent Research Fund Denmark under the Culture and Communication programme.
Research Project Automated Publics: Personalized News Media - Collective Concerns?
Project Duration: 01/01/2026 - 12/31/2030
The media and news landscape is increasingly shaped by algorithms that automatically personalize content based on users’ individual needs and prior media consumption.
AUTOPUBLICS will investigate what this means for citizens’ participation and engagement in democratic communities. The project is led by Professor Jannie Møller Hartley and Associate Professor Andreas Birkbak from the Department of Communication and Humanities at Roskilde University. The project is funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark.
The automation of the news and information flow means that citizens, as media users, become co-creators of their own news environment, and that they partially assume responsibility for the editorial and democratic role that the media have traditionally held on their own. Public are becoming personalized, with algorithms acting as intermediaries, and the project will examine the consequences of this shift.
The project will use both digital and ethnographic methods to study personalized media use across platforms and websites, including new approaches such as data donation, where individuals can voluntarily share their data for analysis. This is necessary because tech companies do not provide access to this type of data, and because researchers need to analyze media consumption across multiple platforms and sites.
Citizens’ access to news and other media content no longer occurs through direct visits to a single news site but is distributed across platforms, websites, and more recently chatbots, all of which rely on different algorithms shaped by different value systems. The project will therefore also investigate how personalization algorithms are built and designed, and how these developments collectively shape public debate and democratic communities.
The four-year project began on January 1, 2026. In addition to producing new knowledge, the project will also communicate its findings through new formats—for example, visually through an exhibition—so that the research becomes accessible to the public in an engaging way.
AUTOPUBLICS will investigate what this means for citizens’ participation and engagement in democratic communities. The project is led by Professor Jannie Møller Hartley and Associate Professor Andreas Birkbak from the Department of Communication and Humanities at Roskilde University. The project is funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark.
The automation of the news and information flow means that citizens, as media users, become co-creators of their own news environment, and that they partially assume responsibility for the editorial and democratic role that the media have traditionally held on their own. Public are becoming personalized, with algorithms acting as intermediaries, and the project will examine the consequences of this shift.
The project will use both digital and ethnographic methods to study personalized media use across platforms and websites, including new approaches such as data donation, where individuals can voluntarily share their data for analysis. This is necessary because tech companies do not provide access to this type of data, and because researchers need to analyze media consumption across multiple platforms and sites.
Citizens’ access to news and other media content no longer occurs through direct visits to a single news site but is distributed across platforms, websites, and more recently chatbots, all of which rely on different algorithms shaped by different value systems. The project will therefore also investigate how personalization algorithms are built and designed, and how these developments collectively shape public debate and democratic communities.
The four-year project began on January 1, 2026. In addition to producing new knowledge, the project will also communicate its findings through new formats—for example, visually through an exhibition—so that the research becomes accessible to the public in an engaging way.
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Contact
Jannie Møller Hartley, professor, project leader, jath@ruc.dk
Forskere
Jannie Møller Hartley, professor, project leader, jath@ruc.dk
Andreas Birkbak, associate professor, andreasbi@ruc.dk
Sarah Feldes, PhD fellow, sfeldes@ruc.dk
Base at Roskilde University
The research centre is based at Department of Communication and Arts
Related research units: Audiences & Mediated Life research group // Journalism and Democracy research group // Centre for News Research // Centre for Big Data
PhD Programme: Doctoral School of Communication and Arts
Relevent Degree Programmes: Journalistik (DK) // Communication Studies // Bachelor in Global Humanities
Research at Roskilde University
More information
Find additional information about the project Automated Publics: Personalized News Media - Collective Concerns?
The project at the Roskilde University Research Portal
Kontakt
Project leader
Jannie Møller Hartley
Professor
Phone +45 4674 3753
jath@ruc.dk