Information Cascades and Echo Chambers
Social media has, over time, become a place where people can not only share their lives with loved ones so stay in touch (which was the result of the social revolution), but also share their political beliefs, news, information, etc. It would be amazing to believe that we are getting well-informed and varies sources in our newsfeed, but because Facebook is a private company, not all content is shared and displayed for its users equally. Instead, algorithms and commercial interests fuel what content is displayed to users, making it difficult to get a wide source of news/information.
While Facebook is, as mentioned, “a place for civic discourse and political engagement among the citizenry”, it has the ability to “fine tune” the content shown to users to highlight advertising (Knight, 1). Not only does it focus on advertising, but it also ensures that the algorithm maximizes the engagement you have with Facebook by showing you things you will likely enjoy or agree with (and therefore, interact with). It gathers data from what you like and engage with and simply pumps out more of this similar information that they know you already enjoy seeing. This creates an echo-chamber where “over time… your feed gets narrower and narrower. It shows less and less content that you might disagree with or find distasteful” (Knight, 1). This proves problematic as it leads to more and more users of Facebook and other similar social media sites to be misinformed and very biased, increasing disagreement and hindering collaboration between groups to help resolve larger conflicts.
This ties into the concept of information cascades we learned in class. Through this concept, it is demonstrated how a person’s decision is affected by the decisions of others while ignoring or disregarding his personal information. This can be tied to the echo chambers of social media in the following way: Imagine that the person making the decisions before you are your past self. Based on this decision and what your past self interacted with, the information shown to your present self can changed and biased to fit that liking. This can lead to the same information being passed on and on, regardless of that the new person’s personal information (your present self) is. Both of these can lead to extremes and biases, and can be very harmful if not properly regulated.
Knight, Megan. “Explainer: How Facebook Has Become the World’s Largest Echo Chamber.” The Conversation, The Conversation, 5 Feb. 2018, theconversation.com/explainer-how-facebook-has-become-the-worlds-largest-echo-chamber-91024.
https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-facebook-has-become-the-worlds-largest-echo-chamber-91024