Closing The Gap: Strategic Approaches to Address
Research Gaps in Social Media Recommendation
System
Abhishek Morya Urvashi Gupta
School of Computer Applications School of Computer Applications
Manav Rachna International Institute Manav Rachna International Institute
of Research & Studies of Research & Studies
Faridabad, Haryana Faridabad, Haryana
abhimorya8826@gmail.com guptaurvashi588@gmail.com
Priyanka Sharma
School of Computer Applications
Manav Rachna International Institute
of Research & Studies
Faridabad, Haryana
priyanka.sca@mriu.edu.in
Abstract— Social media networks are now an inseparable
component of life, serving as a place for information exchange,
contact interaction, and audio-visual content. Recommendation
systems on these kinds of platforms, like social media
platforms, are the key players in this process, helping users get
content that they like and are interested in. However, the
recommendation systems that are in place these days tend to
add an inherent bias; this, in addition to the "cold-start"
problem and lack of context awareness, results in poor
recommendations and disgruntled users. Here, the object of
the research is to tackle the gaps left in the process by
suggesting the most effective and relevant strategies for social
media recommendation system development. We will conduct
an exhaustive literature review to pinpoint the crucial
constraints and suggest differentiable options, such as bias
mitigation approaches, contextual recommendation models, or
even hybrid models, which contain various recommendation
strategies. However, the practical implementation and
evaluation of these methods are also worth mentioning, the
reason being that they may boost recommendation accuracy
and user experience. Both the results and the discussion bring
forth valuable matters related to the usefulness and future
directions of study in this domain.
Keywords—social media, recommendation system, hybrid
models, user experience.
I. INTRODUCTION
Social media has changed the way we use and interact
with information by democratising it and changing how it is
accessed. Media platforms buzzing with billions of users
around the globe produce an endless flow of information, so
it becomes ambiguous for users to find something relevant
and of quality. As personalized content delivery has gained
ground in response to the challenge of information overload,
recommendation systems have made their appearance by
using machine learning and data mining technologies that
adjust to the individual user personas and interests.
However, even with the remarkable progress in
interpretability and personalisation, research on
recommendation systems is still suffering from many voids
and shortages, which are the main reasons why social media
recommendations tend to be ineffective.
Pawan Sharma
School of Computer Applications
Manav Rachna International Institute
of Research & Studies
Faridabad, Haryana
pawansharma2632001@gmail.com
The introduction of new ways of content discovery
usually features popular bias [1] or the bubble effect [2],
which may distort the participants views and provide only a
skewed representation of content. Moreover, the cold start
problem [3], which is a situation in which new users or items
do not have enough data for precise recommendations, is a
problem that leads to incorrect and irrelevant suggestions and
drawbacks. Moreover, circumstance insensitivity in the
majority of the recommendation algorithms [4] poses a
challenge to an automated system that often overlooks the
factors that define user preferences.
This work will be done in order to identify and fill the
research area gaps that still need solutions by offering
practical approaches on how they can enhance social media
recommendation systems’ performance and effectiveness.
We deliver the extensive literature review, the processes of
identification of the major issues, and the environmental
aspects of the alternatives with the help of unbiased methods,
context-aware recommendation models, and hybrid
approaches that include various recommendation
algorithms. Also, we present a proof-of-concept of our
proposed methods, the effectiveness of which is explored in
an empirical evaluation to highlight their capacity to make
recommendations more credible and satisfying to a user.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
These significant contributions of Abdollahpouri et al. [1,
15] towards embedded swing in bias and predictive models
are essential not only for the machine learning community
but also for artificial intelligence. In [1], they demonstrated
diversity-enhancing regularisation approaches that aid in the
reduction of popularity bias and promote content diversity.
Their [15] act as a targeted literature review that captures and
outlines the multi-stakeholder recommendation systems
together with the function of taking into account different
actors perspectives and preferences.
Nguyen and team have done the study about filter
bubbles being emanated by recommender systems through
which users' attention is restricted to particular content that
compliments their current taste. Their research shows that
recommendation systems in fact impact the variety of
content available, which reduces the way divergent views are
revealed, thus making the need for de-biassing and diverse-
boosting techniques obvious.
Coming from a clean slate [3] was therefore the primary
obstacle that Son had to address, a persistent problem that
recommendation systems often face. [3] were devoted to an
introductory review of the recommended options for
processing new user and new item cold-start problems by
means of technique comparison and by employing content-
based filtering, cross-domain recommendation, and hybrid
approaches. The merit of using a variety of strategies for
making recommendations was emphasised by their work,
which enables them to reduce the aggravation of the cold-
start issue.
Adomavicius and Tuzhilin [4] changed the way
recommendations were done when they created context-
aware recommenders. One of the groundbreaking works of
this research [4] has been the introduction of the idea of
using contextual information, e.g., time, location, and
situation, to enhance the recommendation process. They
groomed situation-based recommendation models and
techniques; therefore, the recommendation will be
personalised and appropriated for the different
circumstances.
Research by Wang et al. [5] concentrated on increasing
the performance of recommendation systems, which is
explainable. In [5], they describe the Tree-Enhanced
Embedding Model (TEM) as the thing that allows
hierarchical representations of items and the interpretability
of recommendations that can be generated based on such
representations. The principals of the two started to strive for
user trust at the stage of generating recommendation
decisions and also increased user understanding of what it
was based on, addressing the limited transparency in many
existing recommendation models.
III. RESEARCH GAPS
A. Bias in Recommendation Systems
The fact that recommendation systems usually have
biases that can suggest a skewed and possibly harmful view
of people is noteworthy. Popularity bias occurs when popular
content gets recommended more than obscure or not-so-
popular pieces of content. Thanks to this phenomenon, the
so-called "rich-get-richer" mechanism works, and limited
diversity of content and small chances of "hitting the nail on
the head" occur. On top of that, people´s habits can often be
predicted and reinforced by recommender systems as users
are pushed to narrow their outlook.
Fig. 1. Gender Bias [6].
B. Cold Start Problem
The user or item cold-start problem [3] has long been a
debated issue, but it goes directly to the idea that these new
users or items are simply not equipped with sufficient data
points to allow for accurate recommendations. Historical
user-item interactions of classical collaborative filtering
techniques are at the core of it, so in the cold start, why
should we trust this? The scope of the problem is particularly
extensive in the context of social media, where new users
and contents are continuously popping up.
C. Lack of Context Awareness
Most of the conventional recommendation models debate
whether they go quite well with the contextual factors that
ultimately influence user preference and behavior. Context-
aware recommendation systems [4] are now trying to
incorporate situational, temporal, and environmental data
into the recommendation process, which results in
recommending actions that depend on the user's current
context. Whereas making and giving all the right contextual
information is the big deal in social media recommendation
systems, it is one of the shortcomings of those systems.
IV. PROPOSED APPROACHES
A. Context-Aware Recommendation Models
To this end, we are proposing the development of
context-made recommendation systems that will include
context in the recommendation algorithm. Such a sense of
purpose can be fulfilled with the framework of contextual
information in the recommendation model, like time and
location, and also with the use of device features [7].
Another strategy that can be implemented is the emergence
of attention models [8], which are useful in adjusting the
model so that it reflects the importance of the contextual
factors to the user at that given time.
B. Hybrid Recommendation Models
To deal with the cold-start problems and the
recommendation, we came up with the hybrid
recommendation method, which mixes diverse
recommendation mechanisms and not only adheres to every
person's preferences but is also able to offer inspiration. For
example, content-based filtering [9] is persuasive in that it
helps new users start by generating recommendations of new
products or properties they would not have otherwise visited.
However, collaborate filtering [10] can also be useful for
existing users and things that are accompanied by the
required number of interactions. Furthermore, advancing the
technologies that recommend products based on knowledge
(ontologies, linked data sources) and feeding them with this
knowledge can also facilitate the improvement of
recommendations and address cold start conditions.
V. IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION
For the purpose of proving the feasibility and generic
ability of our approaches, the implementation of a proof-of-
concept social media recommendation system leading to bias
mitigation techniques, context-aware modelling, and hybrid
recommendation strategies was carried out. We tested the
system using an actual dataset from one of the main social
networking platforms, including a comparison to a baseline
recommendation algorithm.
A. Dataset and Experimental Setup such as time, position, and device, the recommendations
We successfully used a popular social media platform to corresponded to the user’s specific situation and his or her
publicly post data, including users, item interactions, expedient choice at a particular place. Furthermore, the
additions of context (e.g., times, locations), and added mechanism of attention achieved was to pick, highlight, and
features (text, images). The dataset was segmented into give high priority to the most notable contextual factors, and
training and testing sets, and data cleaning was performed to this substantially improved recommendation performance.
make this data cleaner for the machine to process with C. Hybrid Recommendations Strategies
accuracy [11].
The hybrid recommendation systems, which combine the
B. Evaluation Metrics content-based filtering methodology, the collaborative
To assess the grade of performance of our filtering strategy, and knowledge-based techniques, appear to
recommendation system, we have used such performance perform better in terms of handling a cold start problem and
metrics as precision, recall, and normalised discounted as regards the precision of the recommendations for both
cumulative gain (NDCG) [12]. Such metrics indicate well-established and user items. Our model facilitates this by
whether the recommended information included in the interweaving the strengths of different recommendation
system is useful from various aspects, translating to how the strategies and therefore enables it to deliver dependable
recommendation system performs in providing services. recommendations in situations with limited interaction data,
which will in turn improve its overall recommendation
VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION quality as users enjoy a better user experience.
A. Bias Mitigation and Diversity VII. FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Bias mitigation strategies such as diversity-enhancing It shows that the adopted strategies can yield reasonable
regularisation and adversarial debiasing, which we have results; therefore, the solution to the existing problems in the
tested, belong to the best ones as they garner much more field of social media recommendation systems can be
diversified embeddings relative to baseline approaches. discovered. Through this process of bias mitigation,
Through the use of such tactics, a vast content of different contextual awareness, and then a hybrid recommendation
features was put into consideration that not only corrected strategy, we improved the quality, diversity, and customer
popularity bias but also prevented filter bubble effects. satisfaction of the recommendation system.
Table 1. provides the number of diversity scores [13] for Despite the fact that there are some challenges still left to
various recommendation approaches, which in turn indicate overcome and research prospects in these fields, humanising
the good performance of the proposed approaches in content studies are also on the new stage. One of the areas we can
improvement. explore is showing the complex way of natural language
processing in which the user's preferences as well as content
TABLE I. NUMBER OF DIVERSITY SCORES. semantics are analyzed. Furthermore, incorporating into the
Approach Diversity Score model explainable AI algorithms [14] can help to establish a
better understanding, and a greater likelihood of trust, of
Baseline 0.42 recommendation systems empowering users in decision-
making.
Diversity-Enhancing
0.68
Regularization On the other hand, recommendation services should
accommodate and incorporate the evolving and presenting
Adversarial Debiasing 0.71
aspects of social media platforms (for instance, live
streaming, virtual reality, and augmented reality), which will
require a modification of algorithms [15].
Diversity Score VIII. FUTURE WORK AND LIMITATIONS
0.8 Our proposed techniques, however, have proven to close
0.68 0.71 some of the existing gaps in researching recommendation
0.6
systems for social media networks, though there are still
0.4 0.42 some drawbacks and openings for further research. One
0.2 weakness in these suggestions is their computational
0 complexity, together with the resource deficit that some of
the techniques, including adversarial debiasing and attention
l…
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mechanisms, face. Strategies for efficient implementation

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and optimisation can be developed to realise scalability and

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real-time response on large social media network platforms

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Fig. 2. Number of diversity scores in graphical form.
B. Context-Aware Recommendations
Our models that are context-aware, which we developed
by using context features and attention mechanisms, gave
better recommendation results as compared to context-
agnostic benchmarks in terms of recommendation quality
and user satisfaction. Through applying specific conditions,
[16].
And further evaluation of the of the usage of one dataset
from an ordinary social app, which may not be
comprehensive enough to show the diversity and complexity
of different platforms and user behaviors, It will be
appropriate to have more studies and implementations on
various datasets and real-world applications for the purpose
of enhancing the tests of the approaches’ robustness and
generalizability [17].
Again, this problem can exist, coupled with the fact that
user tastes are constantly changing and the increasingly
complex social media platforms are evolving. The novelty
characteristics of the feature, modality, and behaviour will
constantly call for the innovation and development of
recommendation systems. Constant research and
development initiatives will have to follow these changes in
order to remain current in the field and judge the worth of
recommendations [18].
However, further work is needed and may include
research on the knowledge of advanced natural language
processing methods for better remembering and showing the
semantics of both users' preferences and content. Thus, the
generated recommendations will be appropriately
personalised and contextual. Further, the implementation of
explainable AI strategies [14, 19] may well make
recommendation systems more open and permissible for
appearance, further inspiring trust from users and visibility
for decision-making [20].
On top of that, as social media platforms keep on
advancing and integrating new features and ways (for
example, live streaming of virtual or augmented reality),
recommendation systems will have to constantly update and
accommodate those changes. Designing recommendation
approaches that can deal with data of various modalities,
such as text, videos, and images, will be considered highly
significant tasks for providing high-quality and engaging
recommendations [21].
IX. CONCLUSION
This paper discussed the major gaps in social media
recommendation systems and gave a strategic framework for
addressing these shortcomings. Some of the measures
proposed include fighting biases, incorporating context
awareness, and using hybrid recommendation
strategies. After a thorough literature review, we pinpointed
the disadvantages of the existing recommendation systems
that have an influential sign, and we offered more effective
issues, specifically to improve the quality of helpfulness and
support of recommendation systems as well as the users'
experience of them.
The implementation and empirical evaluation of the
proposed methods not only demonstrated the feasibility of
the approach but also illustrated benchmarks in the areas of
recommendation diversity, context-aware modelled
recommendation relevance, and cold-start scenarios through
hybrid recommendation strategies.
However, though the work is impressive and has enjoyed
great successes, there are undoubtedly also emerging
challenges, and the field needs more research. Resilient
efforts will be needed to ensure an ongoing number of
interventions that keep pace with the changing social media
landscape of platforms, unaided modality, and well-refined
user preferences.
The path to social media recommendation systems that
can inform, involve, and bring an actual benefit to users can
be opened gradually by further developing the concepts of
recommendation system research outlined here as well as
taking intentional steps to the solutions described to the
challenges.
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