The shortcomings of the diversity diet: Public Service Media, algorithms and the multiple dimensions of diversity

This chapter discusses the multiple and conflicting understandings of diversity, focusing specifically on public service media (PSM) organisations. The use of recommender algorithms in PSM organisations exposes the fundamental incompatibility of journalistic and computational understandings of diversity, further highlighted by analyses of PSB practitioners understanding of diversity. The incompatibility is further examined via a thought experiment, which considers how a diversity algorithm for public service media would actually be implemented. The experiment shows that media diversity does not align with with computational diversity as applied in the context of algorithmic recommender systems. Finally, the chapter concludes that the idea of an algorithmic diversity diet undermines the purpose of PSB/PSM as a place for development of free thought.