Analysis Of The Filter Bubble

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In a not so distant past, we lived in a world where most individuals did not have the means to immediately share information with thousands of others. In order to have your voice or opinion heard, you had to be wealthy or included with names like Gutenburg and Martin Luther to gain access to the airwaves or other modes of distribution used in the past. There was a huge segregation between producers and consumers. For hundreds of years, a select few were in control of what information and content could be disseminated. Now while this still may be the case today, it is argued that the gatekeepers of media have less of an influence over the types of content citizens can subscribe to. While there is some truth to this statement, this theory map …show more content…

He investigates the reasons why Internet users are not seeing the other 52% of people who share conflicting worldviews with us. The filter bubble explains why many citizens in the United Kingdom did not anticipate Brexit or many people in the United States were caught off guard when the votes for Donald Trump started outnumbering Hillary Clinton’s on November 8th. In this theory map, I intend on exploring the details behind these events as well as several other pressing issues that face each Facebook and Google user and the ways we can possibly counteract the filter bubble in order to foster a healthy …show more content…

However, while it may be true that the use of these networks furthers an assortment of perspectives that extend far beyond those ideas expressed in newspapers. Flaxman worries that they also ‘increase ideological segregation,’ a phrase that accurately depicts what is currently happening with the spike in filter bubbles. Within his work, Flaxman researches the web search history of a staggering fifty thousand users within the United States and finds that platforms such as Facebook and Google are responsible for an increase in the “ideological distances” between individuals (Flaxman et. al, 2016). The authors suggest that users naturally visit ideologically similar outlets as their closest networks online, in part because their partialities align with the websites that they visit most. Commentators on Flaxman’s work such as Sunstein (2009) predict that echo chambers are part of the package when comes with this newfangled mode of news consumption. People are simply more inclined to click articles that align with their political viewpoints. Flaxman’s paper makes it obvious that

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