Growing up in a 2 channel city (that is, we only had 2 channels on the TV to choose from) meant that we had very limited sources of news. The channels were focused on providing facts-based news without the filtration of opinion. In our house, 6:30 pm was a sacred time because “The News” was on and there were no catch-up-later options unless you got the Newspaper the next morning. Dinner would be cleared, the dishes done and the family sat down to see what was happening in the world.
Let me just say, I’m definitely not someone who will say that we should all live as we did in “the good ole days”. Flares and Mullets are all the evidence we need that there were serious issues with society back then. Mullets? ……. I seriously can not understand mullets.
I always remember that whenever there was a political issue, the TV stations would bring in a representative from both major political parties to discuss/debate the issue. As an audience, we got to hear both sides of the argument and while we may identify with one side more than the other, there were often times that the counter-argument would resonate.
I do wonder if our affiliation would have changed if they obfuscated the name and party of the representatives and we only listened to the facts. Would be a great example of the effects of Affiliation Bias1.
What all of that meant was that we mainly had a politically balanced message. We defended our position on the issue but we understood where the other side was coming from and what motivated them.
I need to take a small side-track here and touch on the economics of News. There are hundreds of people from anchors, to journalists, to camera operators, wardrobe, technicians (and many more) involved in producing that 30 min News program. The only way all those people could survive is from the advertising revenue. It is important to always remember that someone is paying for that free service you are using.
The dawn of the Internet Age brought with it access to an incredible variety of news and opinions. Today we can tune into news sources from all over the world. The way we consume news has also changed, no longer do we gather around the TV to “watch” the news, but now we get important stories fed into our social media and aggregation feeds.
And that’s awesome. I can get the information I need to make business and personal decisions in a fraction of the time. I can be alerted when something important happens. I’m all for this, but there is a catch which we have to be aware of.
Aggregation services, like Flipboard, allow us to curate the people/sources that we want to follow. As I would read the news on Flipboard, I often found myself saying “I don’t like these stories” and would update my Flipboard settings to stop showing me that content. What I was doing was silencing the counter to my beliefs.
The dissemination of news and videos through social media is prone to a similar problem. We usually “follow” people we like, friends in the real world, and influencers who we admire or aspire to be like. Most of these people will share common beliefs with us. Often, if someone is too radical, or they share too many videos of their dog, we just mute them so we don’t have to read their crazy posts. Thank you thank you thank you Facebook for the mute button!
But if social media has become our primary source of news, we have a real problem. We are now living in an echo chamber where all we are seeing are posts and opinions from people who are just like us. We share an opinion on a matter and variations of that opinion are echoed back to us by all our friends who share the same values and opinions. Soon, we find ourselves in a position where so many people agree with us that we no longer even consider the counter to our opinion.
Remember the side note on advertising? This is an important point to come back to. Those free services we are using, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok etc, all make money through advertising. So the way they make more money is by showing you content that you want to watch. They have algorithms that are looking at your friends, the content they like, and the content that people similar to them also engage with. With all of that information, they keep serving up what the algorithm calculates you will be most likely to fully watch (the longer you are engaged, the more advertising revenue they make). Hint: That’s why you see lots of conspiracy videos, the number of videos does not make it real.
This issue was highlighted by the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma”2. Ironic since Netflix uses algorithms to guess what I want to watch! The issue is also the crux of what is creating deep divisions in society today. Technology should have brought us together. We can connect in ways never imagined even 20 years ago. Instead, we are seeing deeper divisions than ever before because we are losing the ability to identify with those who oppose our opinions. We think that “everyone thinks the way we do” because all the people in our “curated world” do. The opposing worldview becomes anathema to us.
So there are two components of the Echo Chamber we need to be aware of:
1. The purposeful curation of the voices we listen to.
2. The algorithmic curation is based on what we, and our friends, like on the platforms we use.
This is not to say that we need to go back to the old days (just remember mullets if you’re ever tempted). We primarily need to be aware of the issue and we should also embrace counter opinions. Unmute that relative who challenges your beliefs. You don’t have to agree with them, but an understanding of a counter opinion will help you be sure about why you think the way you do.
1,A bias that occurs when people evaluate a person’s actions on the basis of his/her connection to an organisation, rather than on the merits of the behaviour itself.
2.The Social Dilemma https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224
