Felicia Löecherbach
Biographic Data
| ID | 6847808 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Felicia Löecherbach |
| GIVEN NAMES | Felicia |
| FAMILY NAME | Löecherbach |
| SIGNATURE | LÖECHERBACH F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2637-613X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
What is news? Mapping the diversity of news experiences in digital trace data
Political communication research centers the definition of news around institutions and norms tied to professional journalism. However, qualitative audience research increasingly shows that this approach does not match the reality of citizens anymore – news has become a much more fluid, fragmented concept than just what has been produced by journalists. Not accounting for these changes means that researchers are missing out on important sources o…
Election research in the age of regulated data access under the EU Digital Services Act
Political debates, campaigns, and advertising increasingly take place on online platforms. However, research on election communication has been significantly hampered as formerly accessible data sources have been withdrawn or commercialised. With the implementation of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) a number of platforms have (re-)established data access modalities for ‘public’ data via APIs or specific portals. How access to public data is imp…
Whose truth is it anyway? An experiment on annotation bias in times of factual opinion polarization
Information shapes citizens’ political decision-making. This process is amply studied by social scientists, for whom human annotation is a crucial instrument in their toolkit. Due to the democratization of data and the advances in NLP more data can be analyzed or classified, making these benchmarks more important than ever: An algorithm trained on biased data will reproduce and often exacerbate bias. Currently, disagreement and bias are often con…
Fulfilling data access obligations: How could (and should) platforms facilitate data donation studies
Research into digital platforms has become increasingly difficult. One way to overcome these difficulties is to build on data access rights in EU data protection law, which requires platforms to offer users a copy of their data. In data donation studies, researchers ask study participants to exercise this right and donate their data to science. However, there is increasing evidence that platforms do not comply with designated laws. We first discu…
Googling Politics? Comparing Five Computational Methods to Identify Political and News-related Searches from Web Browser Histories
Search engines play a crucial role in today’s information environment. Yet, political and news-related (PNR) search engine use remains understudied, mainly due to the lack of suitable measurement methods to identify PNR searches. Existing research focuses on specific events, topics, or news articles, neglecting the broader scope of PNR search. Furthermore, self-reporting issues have led researchers to use browsing history data, but scalable metho…
Out of control
This chapter aims to provide insight into the interplay of algorithmic settings, the possibility to customize recommendation systems, and perceived user agency. In news recommender systems, users can exercise implicit control through the feedback loop and explicit control through adjusting settings. So far there is still little research into if and how users exercise such control. Using a novel experimental design (N=248) that allows users to eng…
Linkage Analysis Revised – Linking Digital Traces and Survey Data
Linkage analysis, i.e. linking media exposure, content, and surveys, has been a powerful tool to assess media effects. However, the development of online communication and the advent of social media brings about many challenges for traditional linkage designs. In this paper, we explain the three steps of linkage designs for online communication effects and the usage of computational approaches to capture communication exposure and content. We the…
Epistemic Overconfidence in Algorithmic News Selection
The process of news consumption has undergone great changes over the past decade: Information is now available in an ever-increasing amount from a plethora of sources. Recent work suggests that most people would favor algorithmic solutions over human editors. This stands in contrast to public and scholarly debate about the pitfalls of algorithmic news selection—i.e., the so-called “filter bubbles.” This study therefore investigates reasons and mo…
The Unified Framework of Media Diversity: A Systematic Literature Review
How to study media diversity has become a major concern in today’s media landscape. Many expect that algorithmic filtering and a shift of audiences from legacy media to new intermediaries decrease the diversity of news diets, leading to fragmented societies, polarization and spread of misinformation. Different fields, from journalism research to law and computer science, are involved in the study of media diversity. They operate, however, with va…
Whose truth is it anyway? An experiment on annotation bias in times of factual opinion polarization
Information shapes citizens’ political decision-making. This process is amply studied by social scientists, for whom human annotation is a crucial instrument in their toolkit. Due to the democratization of data and the advances in NLP more data can be analyzed or classified, making these benchmarks more important than ever: An algorithm trained on biased data will reproduce and often exacerbate bias. Currently, disagreement and bias are often con…
Googling Politics? Comparing Five Computational Methods to Identify Political and News-related Searches from Web Browser Histories
Search engines play a crucial role in today’s information environment. Yet, political and news-related (PNR) search engine use remains understudied, mainly due to the lack of suitable measurement methods to identify PNR searches. Existing research focuses on specific events, topics, or news articles, neglecting the broader scope of PNR search. Furthermore, self-reporting issues have led researchers to use browsing history data, but scalable metho…
Linkage Analysis Revised – Linking Digital Traces and Survey Data
Linkage analysis, i.e. linking media exposure, content, and surveys, has been a powerful tool to assess media effects. However, the development of online communication and the advent of social media brings about many challenges for traditional linkage designs. In this paper, we explain the three steps of linkage designs for online communication effects and the usage of computational approaches to capture communication exposure and content. We the…
The Unified Framework of Media Diversity: A Systematic Literature Review
How to study media diversity has become a major concern in today’s media landscape. Many expect that algorithmic filtering and a shift of audiences from legacy media to new intermediaries decrease the diversity of news diets, leading to fragmented societies, polarization and spread of misinformation. Different fields, from journalism research to law and computer science, are involved in the study of media diversity. They operate, however, with va…
Epistemic Overconfidence in Algorithmic News Selection
The process of news consumption has undergone great changes over the past decade: Information is now available in an ever-increasing amount from a plethora of sources. Recent work suggests that most people would favor algorithmic solutions over human editors. This stands in contrast to public and scholarly debate about the pitfalls of algorithmic news selection—i.e., the so-called “filter bubbles.” This study therefore investigates reasons and mo…
Out of control
This chapter aims to provide insight into the interplay of algorithmic settings, the possibility to customize recommendation systems, and perceived user agency. In news recommender systems, users can exercise implicit control through the feedback loop and explicit control through adjusting settings. So far there is still little research into if and how users exercise such control. Using a novel experimental design (N=248) that allows users to eng…
Linkage Analysis Revised – Linking Digital Traces and Survey Data
Linkage analysis, i.e. linking media exposure, content, and surveys, has been a powerful tool to assess media effects. However, the development of online communication and the advent of social media brings about many challenges for traditional linkage designs. In this paper, we explain the three steps of linkage designs for online communication effects and the usage of computational approaches to capture communication exposure and content. We the…
Fulfilling data access obligations: How could (and should) platforms facilitate data donation studies
Research into digital platforms has become increasingly difficult. One way to overcome these difficulties is to build on data access rights in EU data protection law, which requires platforms to offer users a copy of their data. In data donation studies, researchers ask study participants to exercise this right and donate their data to science. However, there is increasing evidence that platforms do not comply with designated laws. We first discu…
Googling Politics? Comparing Five Computational Methods to Identify Political and News-related Searches from Web Browser Histories
Search engines play a crucial role in today’s information environment. Yet, political and news-related (PNR) search engine use remains understudied, mainly due to the lack of suitable measurement methods to identify PNR searches. Existing research focuses on specific events, topics, or news articles, neglecting the broader scope of PNR search. Furthermore, self-reporting issues have led researchers to use browsing history data, but scalable metho…
Whose truth is it anyway? An experiment on annotation bias in times of factual opinion polarization
Information shapes citizens’ political decision-making. This process is amply studied by social scientists, for whom human annotation is a crucial instrument in their toolkit. Due to the democratization of data and the advances in NLP more data can be analyzed or classified, making these benchmarks more important than ever: An algorithm trained on biased data will reproduce and often exacerbate bias. Currently, disagreement and bias are often con…
What is news? Mapping the diversity of news experiences in digital trace data
Political communication research centers the definition of news around institutions and norms tied to professional journalism. However, qualitative audience research increasingly shows that this approach does not match the reality of citizens anymore – news has become a much more fluid, fragmented concept than just what has been produced by journalists. Not accounting for these changes means that researchers are missing out on important sources o…
Election research in the age of regulated data access under the EU Digital Services Act
Political debates, campaigns, and advertising increasingly take place on online platforms. However, research on election communication has been significantly hampered as formerly accessible data sources have been withdrawn or commercialised. With the implementation of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) a number of platforms have (re-)established data access modalities for ‘public’ data via APIs or specific portals. How access to public data is imp…
Computer Science (7 works) · Social Media and Politics (5 works) · Data science (4 works) · Media Influence and Politics (4 works) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (3 works) · Political science (3 works) · World Wide Web (3 works) · Business (2 works) · Digital media (2 works) · Media Studies and Communication (2 works)