CyCLOPS: Cypriot youth and online Content Looking beyond the single Perspective in information access Systems
About the Project
The CyCLOPS project — “Cypriot youth and online Content: Looking beyond the single Perspective in information access Systems” — has developed a lesson plan and an interactive tool (Cyclops) to encourage Cypriot youth’s critical consumption of online information, by raising awareness about algorithmic processes that filter and sort content.
The project is hosted at and funded by CYENS Centre of Excellence, where it is led by the Fairness and Ethics in AI – Human Interaction Multidisciplinary Research Group (fAIre) , formerly known as Transparency in Algorithms Multidisciplinary Research Group. fAIre is specialized in algorithmic Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics research as well as demo development. The external partners are the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR) and the Open University of Cyprus, who bring peace education and historical dialogue expertise into the team.
The Cyclops tool was designed by Pınar Barlas and developed by a Turkish-Cypriot engineer.
Project Lead
Our Audiences
The lesson plan was developed for and used/evaluated with youth (teenagers). We specifically tested it with a balanced, mixed group of Turkish-speaking and Greek-speaking Cypriots, where the lesson plan encouraged critical thinking about how the online content managed by algorithms represent and impact the Cyprus context.
A portion of the lesson plan is available publicly online. It is our hope that these resources will be used in teacher trainings, and subsequently by teachers themselves.
The Lesson (Plan)
The lesson plan was developed to not only be followed in the 3-hour session to be hold with students, but a version of it, along with the Cyclops tool, is also available for the general public to be implemented by anyone interested.
The lesson plan (available here) was developed by our partners Loizos Loukaidis and Ümran Avni at the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR), and Prof. Michalinos Zembylas the Open University of Cyprus, who brought their invaluable expertise in peace education and historical dialogue.
The Interactive Tool
The tool is designed by combining two demos that were previously developed at the Transparency in Algorithms Multidisciplinary Research Group (TAG) at CYENS. One of the demos focuses on social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram) while the other focuses on search engines (e.g. Google).
The Search Engine Demo
This demo gives the user the option to search for a particular topic (out of a list of topics available), then upon seeing the results, the option to search for the same topic in other manners or with another ‘account’. So, the user can see how the search results change based on the language or wording of the query (e.g. Kıbrıs vs. Κύπρος, scientist vs. woman scientist) as well as the impact of the user’s profile (e.g. age, gender, location) on the results chosen.
Antrea Chrysanthou, Pınar Barlas, Kyriakos Kyriakou, Styliani Kleanthous, and Jahna Otterbacher. 2020. Bursting the Bubble: Tool for Awareness and Research about Overpersonalization in Information Access Systems. In Proceedings of the 25th Int. Conf. on Intelligent User Interfaces Companion (IUI '20). https://doi.org/10.1145/3379336.3381863
The Social Media Demo
This demo presents the user with a social media homepage with posts about particular topics (e.g. Nuclear Energy, GMOs) and asks the user to “like” posts or comments that they agree with. Upon interacting with a post/comment, more posts that match that topic and point of view (e.g. supporting Nuclear Energy) are loaded, in a feedback loop that leaves out other points of view and other topics.
Pınar Barlas, Kyriakos Kyriakou, Antrea Chrysanthou, Styliani Kleanthous, and Jahna Otterbacher. 2020. OPIAS: Over-Personalization in Information Access Systems. In Adjunct Publication of the 28th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP '20 Adjunct). https://doi.org/10.1145/3386392.3397607
Demo of the Cyclops tool
The purpose of the Cyclops tool is to encourage the critical consumption of online information, by raising awareness about algorithmic processes that filter and sort content. It is an interactive tool which consists of three main sections on the user site: Search Engine, Social Media and Explanation Page and the Administration Panel on the admin/researcher site. It can be used for both research and awareness/education/training purposes on personalized information filtering in information access systems.
Interested to Collaborate?
Contact us and we will get back as soon as possible to discuss the details.