Title: Online participation and crowdsourcing as a solution to mitigate news bias

Authors: Himesha Wijekoon; Boris Schegolev; Vojtěch Merunka

Addresses: Faculty of Economics and Management, Department of Information Engineering, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 16500, Prague, Czech Republic; Faculty of Science, Department of Industrial Management, University of Kelaniya, Kelaniya, 11600, Sri Lanka ' Faculty of Economics and Management, Department of Information Engineering, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 16500, Prague, Czech Republic ' Faculty of Economics and Management, Department of Information Engineering, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 16500, Prague, Czech Republic; Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Engineering, Department of Software Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Jugoslávských partyzánů 1580/3, 16000, Prague, Czech Republic

Abstract: It is apparent that certain news outlets occasionally report biased news. Forcefully planted biased viewpoints can cause harmful effects on society thus democracy. Since online news is gradually becoming the main source of news particularly for the new generation, new mechanisms to tackle online news bias will benefit the society as a whole in future. In this study we investigate how online participation and crowdsourcing techniques can be utilised to fight against biased news to leverage the power of internet users who are now becoming active participants rather than merely being passive readers. Even though there have been some previous attempts to mitigate online news bias, the aforementioned methods have been overlooked and underutilised. Based on the findings of this study a novel news platform to mitigate online news bias is proposed and discussed in the end.

Keywords: online participation; crowdsourcing; news bias; online news; news aggregation; news platform; bias mitigation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEG.2022.123250

International Journal of Electronic Governance, 2022 Vol.14 No.1/2, pp.112 - 130

Received: 11 Oct 2020
Accepted: 06 Jul 2021
Published online: 06 Jun 2022 *