The Team

Mykola Makhortykh is a principal investigator of the project "Algorithm audit of the impact of user- and system-side factors on web search bias in the context of federal popular votes in Switzerland." He is an Alfred Landecker lecturer at the Institute of Communication and Media Science (University of Bern), where he leads the project "Algorithmic turn in Holocaust memory transmission: Challenges, opportunities, threats." In his research, Mykola investigates the impact of artificial intelligence and algorithmic systems on politics- and history-centered information behavior in online environments. He combines traditional social science and humanities methods with novel computational approaches to achieve this goal. His other research interests include trauma and memory studies, armed conflict reporting, disinformation and computational propaganda research, cybersecurity and critical security studies, and bias in information retrieval systems. 

Victoria is a PhD student at the Institute of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Bern. She focuses on how users interact with algorithm-driven platforms, such as search engines or AI chatbots, to find information on different topics, including current events and politics. Her research interests also include algorithmic bias, the spread of misinformation and propaganda, and factors that influence trust in digital content. In her research, Victoria uses surveys, experiments, content analysis, and other methods. Prior to her academic career, she worked as a journalist.