THE CRITICISM OF PERSONALIZED ONLINE NEWS FEED: ECHO CHAMBER EFFECT, FILTER BUBBLE AND CYBERBALCANIZATION

The aim of this research is to explain the concept and types of personalized online news, as well as providing a holistic view by presenting different views on this distinctive feature of the new media with literature review. In this context, the study firstly focuses on the basic working logic of algorithms that primarily provide personalized news content. Subsequently, the assumptions of critical works on the automatic creation of personal news feeds are discussed in the context of echo chamber effect, filter bubble, and cyberbalkanization concepts. Finally, the comparison of different approaches in the literature is provided by presenting the results of empirical studies in which the criticisms are found to be overhyped. The study also describes the technological tools which are developed to solve the problems that may be caused by the personalized news. At the end of the research, it was emphasized that journalistic ethics should be improved to include transparency of technological processes of news personalization as well as media ownership and news content. Media literacy courses have also been proposed to cover these topics