On Friday 16 October 2026, Dongxiao Li successfully defended the PhD thesis “Mediating User Preference Communication in Platformized Media: A User-Centric Study of Recommender Systems in Audiovisual Environments” at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, earning the academic degree of Doctor of Media and Communication Studies. Congratulations, Dr. Li!
The research was supervised by Prof. Dr. Pieter Ballon, Prof. Dr. Heritiana Ranaivoson and Prof. Dr. Annelien Smets.
About the PhD thesis
Recommender systems (RS) have become a central infrastructure of audiovisual media consumption in platformized environments. They shape what users encounter, how content is made visible, and how preferences are inferred, interpreted, responded to, and acted upon. While much RS research treats user preference mainly as a technical problem of prediction and matching, this dissertation approaches it from a user-centered and communication-oriented perspective. It examines how the expression, negotiation, and enactment of user preference are mediated by RS in everyday audiovisual media use, and with what implications for user experience and platform personalization. To address this question, the dissertation adopts a multi-method design across four complementary studies. Read and download the full abstract below.
Download the abstract (PDF)
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PhD defence Dongxiao Li -
PhD defence Dongxiao Li -
