Abstract

Modern information access technologies have broadened both access to information and the ability to disseminate new information. In this talk, I take up the question of why we develop and deploy information access technologies. As information and information access have profound impact on both individual people and the societies they shape and inhabit, clearly defining the goals of such systems is necessary to properly evaluate them and to ensure that information access promotes healthy, well-informed, and democratic societies.

I will discuss several goals that may be set for an information access system; how those may support or oppose broader economic, political, ethical, or social objectives and principles; and how specific goals affect the evaluation of the effectiveness, behavior, and impacts of information access systems.

Slides

Papers Discussed

Michael D. Ekstrand, Aleksandra Sarcevic, Afsaneh Razi, Maria Soledad Pera, Robin Burke, and Katherine Landau Wright. 2025. Recommending With, Not For: Co-Designing Recommender Systems for Social Good. Transactions on Recommender Systems. Just Accepted (Aug 5, 2025) (August 2025; online Aug 5, 2025). DOI 10.1145/3759261. arXiv:2508.03792 [cs.HC].

Michael D. Ekstrand, Anubrata Das, Robin Burke, and Fernando Diaz. 2022. Fairness in Information Access Systems. Foundations and Trends® in Information Retrieval 16(1–2) (July 2022), 1–177. DOI 10.1561/1500000079. arXiv:2105.05779 [cs.IR]. NSF PAR 10347630. Impact factor: 8. Cited 239 times.

Michael D. Ekstrand, Lex Beattie, Maria Soledad Pera, and Henriette Cramer. 2024. Not Just Algorithms: Strategically Addressing Consumer Impacts in Information Retrieval. In Proceedings of the 46th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR ’24, IR for Good track), Mar 24–28, 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 14611:314–335. DOI 10.1007/978-3-031-56066-8_25. NSF PAR 10497110. Acceptance rate: 35.9%. Cited 14 times.

Michael D. Ekstrand, Maria Soledad Pera, and Katherine Landau Wright. 2023. Seeking Information with a ‘More Knowledgeable Other’. ACM Interactions 30(1) (January 2023), 70–73. DOI 10.1145/3573364. Cited 10 times.

Works Cited

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