Sharing loads of news and political opinion on Facebook does more harm than good it turns out. The spread of misinformation, created and made viral by in at least the current infamous case of Russian bots seeking to sway an election, has helped create the polarized and tribalistic state the U.S. is in. From the common citizen all the way up to Congress, algorithms and data collection have led to the creation of homogenous clusters of info called echo chambers.
Echo chambers are marked by several common characteristics. They have a strongly centered ideological bent that shuts out dissenting opinions from discussion. The stories and comments in echo chambers display no real dialogue with the facts at hand, allowing emotionally-charged narratives and beliefs to project onto people and situations illogically. The echo chamber also flows through a ‘shared system of meaning,’ whereby people all believe the same thing and anger and rage at ‘Them’ helps fuel self-validation and self-confirmation.
Echo chambers may be too big to ever destroy, but working from the ground up may stifle their online infestation. At the base of social media and echo chambers are people, and people are flawed. The big flaw that leads to fake news and poor public discourse is confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when one looks for info that helps their case and ignores other facts that disagree. With a little open-mindedness and vigilance, echo chambers and confirmation bias can be beaten.
Learn more about confirmation bias with the infographic below, provided by PsychDegrees.
Echo chambers are marked by several common characteristics. They have a strongly centered ideological bent that shuts out dissenting opinions from discussion. The stories and comments in echo chambers display no real dialogue with the facts at hand, allowing emotionally-charged narratives and beliefs to project onto people and situations illogically. The echo chamber also flows through a ‘shared system of meaning,’ whereby people all believe the same thing and anger and rage at ‘Them’ helps fuel self-validation and self-confirmation.
Echo chambers may be too big to ever destroy, but working from the ground up may stifle their online infestation. At the base of social media and echo chambers are people, and people are flawed. The big flaw that leads to fake news and poor public discourse is confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when one looks for info that helps their case and ignores other facts that disagree. With a little open-mindedness and vigilance, echo chambers and confirmation bias can be beaten.
Learn more about confirmation bias with the infographic below, provided by PsychDegrees.
