User-Centric Tensions: Exploring Perceived Benefits and (Dis)comfort in Media Personalisation

Providing personalised recommendations has become standard practice across social and streaming services, online news aggregators, and various other media platforms. While success metrics usually paint a picture of user satisfaction and steer development towards further personalisation, these do not directly articulate users’ experiences of and opinions towards personalised content. This paper presents a mixed-methods investigation into the benefits, harms, and comfort levels regarding personalised media perceived by 211 people in the UK. Overall, participants believe that the benefits of personalisation outweigh the harms. However, they reveal conflicted feelings in relation to their comfort levels. Participants advocated for more agency, and provider transparency, including around data collection and handling. Given the high likelihood of accelerating media personalisation, we conclude that it is imperative to emphasise user-centric design in personalisation development and provide a set of design recommendations.