activity
20212024
most citedAn Empirical Investigation of Personalization Factors on TikTok

108 citations · 261 across the 14 of their papers we have counts for

collaborators

15 papers

cs.IR2024

Googling the Big Lie: Search Engines, News Media, and the US 2020 Election Conspiracy

Ernesto de León, Mykola Makhortykh, Aleksandra Urman +1

The conspiracy theory that the US 2020 presidential election was fraudulent - the Big Lie - remained a prominent part of the media agenda months after the election. Whether and how…

cs.CY2024★ 4 cited

Improving the quality of individual-level online information tracking: challenges of existing approaches and introduction of a new content- and long-tail sensitive academic solution

Silke Adam, Mykola Makhortykh, Michaela Maier +6

This article evaluates the quality of data collection in individual-level desktop information tracking used in the social sciences and shows that the existing approaches face sampl…

cs.IR2024

Algorithmically Curated Lies: How Search Engines Handle Misinformation about US Biolabs in Ukraine

Elizaveta Kuznetsova, Mykola Makhortykh, Maryna Sydorova +3

The growing volume of online content prompts the need for adopting algorithmic systems of information curation. These systems range from web search engines to recommender systems a…

cs.CL2023★ 4 cited

In Generative AI we Trust: Can Chatbots Effectively Verify Political Information?

Elizaveta Kuznetsova, Mykola Makhortykh, Victoria Vziatysheva +3

This article presents a comparative analysis of the ability of two large language model (LLM)-based chatbots, ChatGPT and Bing Chat, recently rebranded to Microsoft Copilot, to det…

cs.CY2023★ 6 cited

The right to audit and power asymmetries in algorithm auditing

Aleksandra Urman, Ivan Smirnov, Jana Lasser

In this paper, we engage with and expand on the keynote talk about the Right to Audit given by Prof. Christian Sandvig at the IC2S2 2021 through a critical reflection on power asym…

cs.CY2022

Novelty in news search: a longitudinal study of the 2020 US elections

Roberto Ulloa, Mykola Makhortykh, Aleksandra Urman +1

The 2020 US elections news coverage was extensive, with new pieces of information generated rapidly. This evolving scenario presented an opportunity to study the performance of sea…

cs.IR2022★ 2 cited

This is what a pandemic looks like: Visual framing of COVID-19 on search engines

Mykola Makhortykh, Aleksandra Urman, Roberto Ulloa

In today's high-choice media environment, search engines play an integral role in informing individuals and societies about the latest events. The importance of search algorithms i…

cs.CL2022★ 5 cited

Panning for gold: Lessons learned from the platform-agnostic automated detection of political content in textual data

Mykola Makhortykh, Ernesto de León, Aleksandra Urman +5

The growing availability of data about online information behaviour enables new possibilities for political communication research. However, the volume and variety of these data ma…

cs.HC2022★ 108 cited

An Empirical Investigation of Personalization Factors on TikTok

Maximilian Boeker, Aleksandra Urman

TikTok currently is the fastest growing social media platform with over 1 billion active monthly users of which the majority is from generation Z. Arguably, its most important succ…

cs.IR2021★ 1 cited

Where the Earth is flat and 9/11 is an inside job: A comparative algorithm audit of conspiratorial information in web search results

Aleksandra Urman, Mykola Makhortykh, Roberto Ulloa +1

Web search engines are important online information intermediaries that are frequently used and highly trusted by the public despite multiple evidence of their outputs being subjec…

cs.CY2021★ 35 cited

Comparing the Language of QAnon-related content on Parler, Gab, and Twitter

Andrea Sipka, Aniko Hannak, Aleksandra Urman

Parler, a "free speech" platform popular with conservatives, was taken offline in January 2021 due to the lack of moderation of hateful and QAnon- and other conspiracy-related cont…

cs.IR2021★ 34 cited

Detecting race and gender bias in visual representation of AI on web search engines

Mykola Makhortykh, Aleksandra Urman, Roberto Ulloa

Web search engines influence perception of social reality by filtering and ranking information. However, their outputs are often subjected to bias that can lead to skewed represent…

cs.IR2021★ 11 cited

Auditing Source Diversity Bias in Video Search Results Using Virtual Agents

Aleksandra Urman, Mykola Makhortykh, Roberto Ulloa

We audit the presence of domain-level source diversity bias in video search results. Using a virtual agent-based approach, we compare outputs of four Western and one non-Western se…

cs.HC2021★ 4 cited

You Are How (and Where) You Search? Comparative Analysis of Web Search Behaviour Using Web Tracking Data

Aleksandra Urman, Mykola Makhortykh

We conduct a comparative analysis of desktop web search behaviour of users from Germany (n=558) and Switzerland (n=563) based on a combination of web tracking and survey data. We f…

cs.CY2021★ 47 cited

The Matter of Chance: Auditing Web Search Results Related to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Primary Elections Across Six Search Engines

Aleksandra Urman, Mykola Makhortykh, Roberto Ulloa

We examine how six search engines filter and rank information in relation to the queries on the U.S. 2020 presidential primary elections under the default - that is nonpersonalized…