Category: Research

  • Context over Categories – Implementing the Theory of Constructed Emotion

    Author: Nils Klüwer Supervisor: Julia Neidhardt, Co-Supervisor: Irina Nalis-Neuner Abstract Emotion analysis is a critical research area with applications ranging from content moderation to personalized systems. Despite its importance, many approaches rely on traditional models, such as Ekman’s universal emotions theory, which reduces emotions to static, predefined categories. This oversimplification neglects the complexity and contextual…

  • Evaluating the Fairness of News Recommender Algorithms Within Detected User Communities

    Author: Bernhard Steindl Supervisor: Julia Neidhardt, Co-Supervisor: Thomas E. Kolb Awards: Bernhard Steindl won the ASAI Masterthesis Prize 2025 (Informatics Website) Abstract This work addresses the problem of unfair treatment of different user groups in the recommendations they receive from recommendation algorithms. Recommender systems (RS) are algorithms that suggest items to a user that are…

  • Exploration of Content-Based Cross-Domain Podcast Recommender Systems

    Author: Matthias Hofmaier Supervisor: Julia Neidhardt, Co-Supervisor: Thomas E. Kolb Abstract Podcasts have become a popular medium in the last decade. The huge amount of data available motivates research on podcast recommender systems to make this data accessible to users. Since interaction-based datasets for podcasts are only available to the large streaming providers, content-based methods…

  • Measuring Controversy in Online Discussions

    Author: Ivan Andreev Supervisor: Stefan Woltran, Co-Supervisor: Julia Neidhardt Abstract In today’s digital era, analyzing and improving online discourse is crucial. Polarisation is indeed a significant issue in contemporary society, particularly amplified within online discussions. The ability to accurately measure polarisation in these contexts is crucial for understanding societal dynamics and addressing associated challenges effectively.…

  • Classification of users in an online news forum – a data analysis of user types and user interaction in the online forum of an Austrian newspaper

    Author: Felix Scholz Supervisor: Hannes Werthner, Co-Supervisor: Julia Neidhardt Abstract Online news forums provide a longstanding way for the exchange of opinions with other users. These often-large user bases consist of a cross-section of all people with various opinions and motivations. By classifying recurring types of behaviors common in such a context, an effort is…

  • Network Analysis on the Austrian Media Corpus: Examining measures of co-occurrence between entities in Austrian media

    Author: Gabriel Grill Supervisor: Hannes Werthner, Co-Supervisor: Julia Neidhardt Abstract The quantitative study of news media can provide insights into reporting patterns and enable public discourse. Print media is essential in democratic societies, so its study remains important. This thesis examines Austrian reporting using network-based methods and unpacks the suitability of such an approach for…