The Social Media Echo Chamber & Political Activism
Seneca, C. (2020, September 17). How to Break Out of Your Social Media Echo Chamber. Retrieved September 30, 2020, from https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-twitter-echo-chamber-confirmation-bias/
Recently, a friend opened a poll on social media, asking “How do I escape the liberal echo chamber?” To explain, these past few months have been characterized with social media posts regarding modern societal issues and education on these matters, such as Black Lives Matter, detainment of undocumented individuals, and many more. Significantly increased after the passing of George Floyd, these posts aim to spread awareness and information, hoping to change someone’s opinion regarding these social issues. With the 2020 presidential election upcoming, many of these social media posts have been geared towards voting – in particular, who to vote for and why. With such a polarized election and environment in the U.S. today, these posts support either Joe Biden or Donald Trump, urging followers to vote for one or the other. In terms of my friend’s question, she points out an interesting and accurate fact – we engage in an “echo chamber.” More often than not, the posts we share are already common knowledge to the viewers, and they are already planning to vote for the specified candidate. My friend asks how we escape these chambers so these activist posts reach those who don’t share our views, and therefore make a real impact or change.
This idea of social media echo chambers is detailed in this article by The Wire. The article explains how social media perpetuates confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is “the natural human tendency to seek, interpret, and remember new information in accordance with preexisting beliefs” (Seneca). In other words, we like to see what we already believe. In terms of social media, companies like Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram will use algorithms to push topics and information that we already interact with in order to maximize advertisement interaction. This creates echo chambers, as we’re rarely presented with new or contrary information. This only encourages the polarization in the country, and circumvents educational or political efforts like those commonly posted on social media. In order to avoid the echo chamber, the article suggests we seek “disconfirmation” in order to experience a more realistic online society and expose ourselves to alternative viewpoints that, in fact, DO exist outside the echo chamber (Seneca).
This article heavily reminds me of the power, trends, and effects of social networks. Specifically the idea of positive and negative relationships between nodes, or people. Large balanced networks consist of either a large group of friends, or two large friend groups that have a negative relationship. In addition, the Triadic Closure Theorem asserts that a node with 2 strong ties will “close” into a connected triangle. Both of these ideas translate to social media networks and seeking confirmation. On social media, we often only see posts of others that we have a positive relationship with, and are often friends with others who are similar. This forms a friendship group, possibly even a connected component. Aside from the rare possible bridge to the other cloud of thought (and if TCT is satisfied, this bridge is a weak tie), we don’t experience a flow of ideas from opposing groups. Network theory clearly explains why we only see information on social media that we already agree with, and how we’re often “friends” with those who support the same beliefs as us. Finding a bridge to an opposing ideology is difficult, but necessary if one is truly looking to sway minds with their posts.