25th ACM Interaction Design and Children 25th Conference (IDC 2026). June 22nd – 25th 2026, Brighton UK

Personalised news recommender systems are effective in disseminating news content based on users’ reading histories but can also amplify and proliferate biased media. This work examines the potential of automated sentence rewriting methods, utilising word replacement methods and large language models (LLMs), to mitigate this side effect of recommender systems. We present a two-step workflow: the application of automated sentence rewriting methods to rewrite biased sentences, and the integration of these rewritten sentences into the recommendation process. We evaluate the effectiveness of sentence rewriting approaches in a simulation framework, to assess how well they mitigate the spread of biased news. Our study demonstrates that applying sentence rewriting to users’ reading histories can result in a significant reduction in the propagation of biased media. Our contributions are threefold: we pioneer the use of LLMs for mitigating the spread of biased news by recommender systems; we demonstrate that algorithms trained on debiased content maintain or improve recommendation accuracy; and we provide a comprehensive exploration of the effectiveness of applying sentence rewriting methods to various components within a recommender system, as well as an investigation of the underlying reasons for their efficacy. This work advances our understanding of media bias mitigation in news content and recommendation algorithms, providing valuable insights into how news recommender systems can prevent the dissemination of biased information.

The potential for bias embedded in data to lead to the perpetuation of social injustice though Artificial Intelligence (AI) necessitates an urgent reform of data curation practices for AI systems, especially those based on machine learning. Without appropriate ethical and regulatory frameworks there is a risk that decades of advances in human rights and civil liberties may be undermined. This paper proposes an approach to data curation for AI, grounded in feminist epistemology and informed by critical theories of race and feminist principles. The objective of this approach is to support critical evaluation of the social dynamics of power embedded in data for AI systems. We propose a set of fundamental guiding principles for ethical data curation that address the social construction of knowledge, call for inclusion of subjugated and new forms of knowledge, support critical evaluation of theoretical concepts within data and recognise the reflexive nature of knowledge. In developing this ethical framework for data curation, we aim to contribute to a virtue ethics for AI and ensure protection of fundamental and human rights.