Introducing empathy into recommender systems as a tool for promoting social cohesion

Contemporary theories of social cohesion emphasize the importance of people accepting and appreciating differences across social groups. The SPICE project aims to promote social cohesion by researching and developing tools and methods to support citizen curation for groups at risk of exclusion. We define citizen curation as a process in which citizens can interpret cultural objects in order to build representations of their own social group. Other groups can then engage with those interpretations in order to appreciate their perspective. In this position paper we discuss how research into empathy can be used to motivate the design of recommender systems that support people in looking beyond their own group and engaging constructively with alternative perspectives.