Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Online News Consumption
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Free, Hateful, and Posted: Rethinking First Amendment Protection of Hate Speech in a Social Media World
Boston College Law Review Volume 60 Issue 7 Article 6 10-30-2019 Free, Hateful, and Posted: Rethinking First Amendment Protection of Hate Speech in a Social Media World Lauren E. Beausoleil Boston College Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/bclr Part of the First Amendment Commons, and the Internet Law Commons Recommended Citation Lauren E. Beausoleil, Free, Hateful, and Posted: Rethinking First Amendment Protection of Hate Speech in a Social Media World, 60 B.C.L. Rev. 2100 (2019), https://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/bclr/vol60/iss7/6 This Notes is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Boston College Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FREE, HATEFUL, AND POSTED: RETHINKING FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTION OF HATE SPEECH IN A SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD Abstract: Speech is meant to be heard, and social media allows for exaggeration of that fact by providing a powerful means of dissemination of speech while also dis- torting one’s perception of the reach and acceptance of that speech. Engagement in online “hate speech” can interact with the unique characteristics of the Internet to influence users’ psychological processing in ways that promote violence and rein- force hateful sentiments. Because hate speech does not squarely fall within any of the categories excluded from First Amendment protection, the United States’ stance on hate speech is unique in that it protects it. -
What Echo Chamber? Reviewing the Evidence
Echo Chamber? What Echo Chamber? Reviewing the Evidence Prof. Axel Bruns Digital Media Research Centre Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia [email protected] @snurb_dot_info Abstract The success of political movements that appear to be immune to any factual evidence that contradicts their claims – from the Brexiteers to the ‘alt‐right’, neo‐fascist groups supporting Donald Trump – has reinvigorated claims that social media spaces constitute so‐called ‘filter bubbles’ or ‘echo chambers’. But while such claims may appear intuitively true to politicians and journalists – who have themselves been accused of living in filter bubbles (Bradshaw 2016) –, the evidence that ordinary users experience their everyday social media environments as echo chambers is far more limited. For instance, a 2016 Pew Center study has shown that only 23% of U.S. users on Facebook and 17% on Twitter now say with confidence that most of their contacts’ views are similar to their own. 20% have changed their minds about a political or social issue because of interactions on social media (Duggan and Smith 2016). Similarly, large‐scale studies of follower and interaction networks on Twitter (e.g. Bruns et al., 2014) show that national Twitterspheres are often thoroughly interconnected and facilitate the flow of information across boundaries of personal ideology and interest, except for a few especially hardcore partisan communities. Building on new, comprehensive data from a project that maps and tracks interactions between 4 million accounts in the Australian Twittersphere, this paper explores in detail the evidence for the existence of echo chambers in that country. It thereby moves the present debate beyond a merely anecdotal footing, and offers a more reliable assessment of the ‘echo chamber’ threat. -
Beyond Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers: the Integrative Potential of the Internet Mahrt, Merja
www.ssoar.info Beyond Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers: The Integrative Potential of the Internet Mahrt, Merja Erstveröffentlichung / Primary Publication Habilitationsschrift / habilitation treatise Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Mahrt, M. (2019). Beyond Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers: The Integrative Potential of the Internet. (Digital Communication Research, 5). Berlin. https://doi.org/10.17174/dcr.v5.0 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY Lizenz (Namensnennung) zur This document is made available under a CC BY Licence Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden (Attribution). For more Information see: Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.de Mahrt Are online audiences today fragmented into echo chambers or ilter Merja Mahrt bubbles? Do users only see what digital platforms (like search engines or social media) let them see? And if so, what are the consequences for the cohesion of a society? Concerns like these abound in recent years. They attest to widely held assumptions about a negative inluence of digital media or even the Internet in general on society. Empirical stud- ies on these phenomena are, however, not as unequivocal. To under- stand why results from previous research are so far inconclusive, this study investigates the role of the Internet for social integration from a more general point of view. The integrative potential of the Internet is assessed to compare it with other media and ultimately better understand to what degree and due to which factors the Internet may or may not help bring society to- Beyond Filter Bubbles gether. -
Echo Chambers
Echo Chambers J. Anthony Cookson, Joseph E. Engelberg and William Mullins* October 7, 2020 Abstract We find evidence of selective exposure to confirmatory information among 300,000 users on the investor social network StockTwits. Self-described bulls are 5 times more likely to follow a user with a bullish view of the same stock than self-described bears. This tendency exists even among professional investors and is strongest for investors who trade on their beliefs. Selective exposure generates differences in the newsfeeds of bulls and bears: over a 50-day period, a bull will see 70 more bullish messages and 15 fewer bearish messages than a bear over the same period. Moreover, beliefs formed in these “echo-chambers” are associated with lower ex- post returns. Finally, we show that selective exposure creates “information silos” in which the diversity of received signals is high across users’ newsfeeds but is low within users’ newsfeeds and that this siloing of information is positively related to trading volume. *Cookson is at the Leeds School of Business at University of Colorado-Boulder ([email protected]). En- gelberg is at the Rady School of Management, UC San Diego ([email protected]). Mullins is at the Rady School of Management, UC San Diego ([email protected]). This draft has benefited from workshop and conference presentations at Georgetown University, Finance in the Cloud III, University of Colorado, and UC San Diego. 1 Introduction Traditional models in finance – where investors have common priors, observe the same public sig- nals, and update their beliefs according to Bayes’ rule – have a difficult time explaining the high trading volume observed in financial markets. -
Opinion Forming in the Digital Age
Opinion Forming in the Digital Age Fake News, Echo Chambers and Populism - Key Themes, Concerns & Recommendations for European Research and Innovation Version 1.0 – October 2018 Editors: Steve Taylor1, Brian Pickering, Paul Grace, Michael Boniface University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre, UK Expert Panel2: Vian Bakir Andrew McStay danah boyd Hugo Mercier Sven Engesser Miriam Metzger Robert Epstein Francesca Polletta Nayla Fawzi Walter Quattrociocchi Philip Fernbach Steven Sloman Dana R. Fisher Dan Sperber Beth Gharrity Gardner Niels Spierings Kristof Jacobs Claire Wardle Susan Jacobson Fabiana Zollo Benjamin Krämer Arkaitz Zubiaga Adam Kucharski 1 Contact author: [email protected] 2 Full positions and affiliations of the expert panel are included within. The Internet provides fast and ubiquitous communication that enables all kinds of communities and provides citizens with easy access to vast amounts of information, although the information is not necessarily verified and may present a distorted view of real events or facts. The Internet’s power as an instant source of mass information can be used to influence opinions, which can have far- reaching consequences. This report’s purpose is to provide input into the advisory processes that determine European support for research into the effects and management of Fake News (e.g. deliberate misinformation), Echo Chambers (e.g. closed communities where biases can be reinforced through lack of diversity in opinions), and the Internet’s influence on social and political movements such as Populism; to provide insight into how innovation that takes these aspects into account can be supported. To address this aim, this report concerns socio-technical implications of the Internet related to the impact of closed communities and misinformation and makes recommendations derived from a consultation with domain experts concerning the research needed to address specific challenges. -
Decoupling Search Topic and Popularity Ranking: Insights on Online Echo Chambers
MIT IDE RESEARCH BRIEF VOL. 2017.8 DECOUPLING SEARCH TOPIC AND POPULARITY RANKING: INSIGHTS ON ONLINE ECHO CHAMBERS Sagit Bar-Gill and Neil Gandal Just as sound reverberates in an enclosed space, so do online environment for content exploration, we broke down opinions and information “bounce” among social circles. search into two dimensions — content topic and content Since “birds of a feather flock together,” these social popularity. We then looked at the ways individuals moved circles consist mostly of like-minded individuals, making through the material. We observed, for instance, the weight it harder for dissenting views to permeate our discourse, that users placed on their own interests versus those of and creating an echo of our own information and views the crowd, and how these patterns relate to an individual’s (1). This echo chamber phenomenon has drawn growing characteristics, such as how social they regard themselves concern in post-election USA, post-Brexit UK, and pretty and whether they try to influence others in their social much everywhere in our increasingly connected world (2– circles (what we term “opinion leaders”). 4). Echo chambers have always been around as a natural result of our homophilous social choices. But as our social In our experimental environment, susceptibility to echo networking continues its shift online, the echoes seem to be chambers is well-proxied by: (I) conducting relatively getting worse (2, 4, 5). little exploration in the search process, and (II) relying on popularity in content choice. Who is responsible for our online echo chambers – ourselves or filtering and ranking algorithms beyond our Therefore, users who conduct little exploration and rely control? Filtering and ranking algorithms are implemented more heavily on the crowd’s previous choices will, over in many of our online environments, creating much- time, see less diverse content. -
Ventriloquism Or an Echo Chamber? Measuring the Strength of House Members’ Rhetoric in Local Newspapers
Ventriloquism or an Echo Chamber? Measuring the Strength of House Members’ Rhetoric in Local Newspapers. Michael K. Romano Department of Political Science Georgia Southern University P.O. Box 8101, Carroll Building 2205 Statesboro, GA 30460 (912) 478-0838 (phone) (912) 478-5348 (fax) [email protected] Paper prepared for the 2015 Midwest Political Science Association Meeting. Chicago IL. April15-19, 2014 Ventriloquism or an Echo Chamber? Measuring the Strength of House Members’ Rhetoric in Local Newspapers. Political elites have been shown to excel at manipulating the information environment. Theories about press control by elites vary. Some argue that actors manipulate the media like a ventriloquist, using the press to restate their rhetoric verbatim, while others argue that journalists act with more agency when deciding the news. I examine the ability of members of the House of Representatives to manipulate news about their work in Washington. Members have an incentive to promote themselves in order to control the public's perception and attempt to leverage the local press through mediated homestyles; cultivating news agencies as a constituency using press releases that are ready-made for news consumption. The extent to which news articles echo press statements will vary depending on the complexity of the issue and the clarity of a member's expressed agenda. To test this relationship, data on press releases is gathered and is matched with corresponding district news coverage. Press releases and matched articles are examined using plagiarism detection software to evaluate overlapping use of representatives' rhetoric. The media system in the United States is tasked with taking the millions of signals, events, actions and non-actions of political actors and condensing them down into meaningful and understandable stories that can be absorbed easily by the populace. -
Bursting the Filter Bubble
BURSTINGTHE FILTER BUBBLE:DEMOCRACY , DESIGN, AND ETHICS Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Technische Universiteit Delft, op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. ir. K. C. A. M. Luyben, voorzitter van het College voor Promoties, in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag, 16 September 2015 om 10:00 uur door Engin BOZDAG˘ Master of Science in Technische Informatica geboren te Malatya, Turkije. Dit proefschrift is goedgekeurd door: Promotors: Prof. dr. M.J. van den Hoven Prof. dr. ir. I.R. van de Poel Copromotor: dr. M.E. Warnier Samenstelling promotiecommissie: Rector Magnificus, voorzitter Prof. dr. M.J. van den Hoven Technische Universiteit Delft, promotor Prof. dr. ir. I.R. van de Poel Technische Universiteit Delft, promotor dr. M.E. Warnier Technische Universiteit Delft, copromotor Independent members: dr. C. Sandvig Michigan State University, USA Prof. dr. M. Binark Hacettepe University, Turkey Prof. dr. R. Rogers Universiteit van Amsterdam Prof. dr. A. Hanjalic Technische Universiteit Delft Prof. dr. ir. M.F.W.H.A. Janssen Technische Universiteit Delft, reservelid Printed by: CPI Koninklijke Wöhrmann Cover Design: Özgür Taylan Gültekin E-mail: [email protected] WWW: http://www.bozdag.nl Copyright © 2015 by Engin Bozda˘g All rights reserved. No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includ- ing photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the author. An electronic version of this dissertation is available at http://repository.tudelft.nl/. PREFACE For Philip Serracino Inglott, For his passion and dedication to Information Ethics Rest in Peace. -
A Longitudinal Analysis of Youtube's Promotion of Conspiracy Videos
A longitudinal analysis of YouTube’s promotion of conspiracy videos Marc Faddoul1, Guillaume Chaslot3, and Hany Farid1,2 Abstract Conspiracy theories have flourished on social media, raising concerns that such content is fueling the spread of disinformation, supporting extremist ideologies, and in some cases, leading to violence. Under increased scrutiny and pressure from legislators and the public, YouTube announced efforts to change their recommendation algorithms so that the most egregious conspiracy videos are demoted and demonetized. To verify this claim, we have developed a classifier for automatically determining if a video is conspiratorial (e.g., the moon landing was faked, the pyramids of Giza were built by aliens, end of the world prophecies, etc.). We coupled this classifier with an emulation of YouTube’s watch-next algorithm on more than a thousand popular informational channels to obtain a year-long picture of the videos actively promoted by YouTube. We also obtained trends of the so-called filter-bubble effect for conspiracy theories. Keywords Online Moderation, Disinformation, Algorithmic Transparency, Recommendation Systems Introduction social media 21; (2) Although view-time might not be the only metric driving the recommendation algorithms, YouTube By allowing for a wide range of opinions to coexist, has not fully explained what the other factors are, or their social media has allowed for an open exchange of relative contributions. It is unarguable, nevertheless, that ideas. There have, however, been concerns that the keeping users engaged remains the main driver for YouTubes recommendation engines which power these services advertising revenues 22,23; and (3) While recommendations amplify sensational content because of its tendency to may span a spectrum, users preferably engage with content generate more engagement. -
Arxiv:1811.12349V2 [Cs.SI] 4 Dec 2018 Content for Different Purposes in Very Large Scale
Combating Fake News with Interpretable News Feed Algorithms Sina Mohseni Eric D. Ragan Texas A&M University University of Florida College Station, TX Gainesville, FL [email protected] eragan@ufl.edu Abstract cations of personalized data tracking for the dissemination and consumption of news has caught the attention of many, Nowadays, artificial intelligence algorithms are used for tar- especially given evidence of the influence of malicious so- geted and personalized content distribution in the large scale as part of the intense competition for attention in the digital cial media accounts on the spread of fake news to bias users media environment. Unfortunately, targeted information dis- during the 2016 US election (Bessi and Ferrara 2016). Re- semination may result in intellectual isolation and discrimi- cent reports show that social media outperforms television as nation. Further, as demonstrated in recent political events in the primary news source (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017), and the US and EU, malicious bots and social media users can the targeted distribution of erroneous or misleading “fake create and propagate targeted “fake news” content in differ- news” may have resulted in large-scale manipulation and ent forms for political gains. From the other direction, fake isolation of users’ news feeds as part of the intense competi- news detection algorithms attempt to combat such problems tion for attention in the digital media space (Kalogeropoulos by identifying misinformation and fraudulent user profiles. and Nielsen 2018). This paper reviews common news feed algorithms as well as methods for fake news detection, and we discuss how news Although online information platforms are replacing the feed algorithms could be misused to promote falsified con- conventional news sources, personalized news feed algo- tent, affect news diversity, or impact credibility. -
Echo Chambers
AVOIDING THE ECHO CHAMBER ABOUT ECHO CHAMBERS: Why selective exposure to like-minded political news is less prevalent than you think — ANDREW GUESS BRENDAN NYHAN Department of Politics Department of Government knightfoundation.org Princeton University Dartmouth College [email protected] [email protected] BENJAMIN LYONS JASON REIFLER | Department of Politics Department of Politics @knightfdn University of Exeter University of Exeter [email protected] [email protected] CONTENTS AVOIDING THE ECHO CHAMBER ABOUT ECHO CHAMBERS CHAMBER ABOUT ECHO THE ECHO AVOIDING 4 THE ECHO CHAMBERS CRITIQUE 6 SELECTIVE EXPOSURE: A MORE COMPLEX STORY 13 THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL CONTEXT 15 CONCLUSION | 17 REFERENCES Contents knightfoundation.org | @knightfdn 2 / 25 Is the expansion of media choice good for democracy? Not according to critics who decry “echo chambers,” “filter bubbles,” and “information cocoons” — the highly polarized, ideologically homogeneous forms of news and media consumption that are facilitated by technology. However, these claims overstate the prevalence and severity of these patterns, which at most AVOIDING THE ECHO CHAMBER ABOUT ECHO CHAMBERS CHAMBER ABOUT ECHO THE ECHO AVOIDING capture the experience of a minority of the public. In this review essay, we summarize the most important findings of the academic literature about where and how Americans get news and information. We focus particular attention on how much consumers engage in selective exposure to media content that is consistent with their political beliefs and the extent to which this pattern is exacerbated by technology. As we show, the data frequently contradict or at least complicate the “echo chambers” narrative, which has ironically been amplified and distorted in a kind of echo chamber effect. -
Voorgeprogrammeerd
Voorgeprogrammeerd Voorgeprogrammeerd.indd 1 28-2-2012 14:19:13 Voorgeprogrammeerd.indd 2 28-2-2012 14:19:13 Voorgeprogrammeerd Hoe internet ons leven leidt Redactie: Christian van ’t Hof Jelte Timmer Rinie van Est Boom Lemma uitgevers Den Haag 2012 Voorgeprogrammeerd.indd 3 28-2-2012 14:19:14 Omslagontwerp: Textcetera, Den Haag Foto omslag: Shutterstock Opmaak binnenwerk: Textcetera, Den Haag © 2012 Rathenau | Boom Lemma uit gevers Behoudens de in of krachtens de Auteurswet gestelde uitzonderingen mag niets uit deze uitgave worden verveelvoudigd, opgeslagen in een geautomatiseerd gegevens- bestand, of openbaar gemaakt, in enige vorm of op enige wijze, hetzij elektronisch, mechanisch, door fotokopieën, opnamen of enige andere manier, zonder vooraf- gaande schriftelijke toestemming van de uitgever. Voor zover het maken van reprografische verveelvoudigingen uit deze uitgave is toe- gestaan op grond van artikel 16h Auteurswet dient men de daarvoor wettelijk ver- schuldigde vergoedingen te voldoen aan de Stichting Reprorecht (Postbus 3051, 2130 KB Hoofddorp, www.reprorecht.nl). Voor het overnemen van (een) gedeelte(n) uit deze uitgave in bloemlezingen, readers en andere compilatiewerken (art. 16 Auteurswet) kan men zich wenden tot de Stichting PRO (Stichting Publicatie- en Reproductierechten Organisatie, Postbus 3060, 2130 KB Hoofddorp, www.cedar.nl/pro). No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means without written permission from the publisher. ISBN 978-90-5931-797-0 NUR 800 www.boomlemma.nl www.rathenau.nl Voorgeprogrammeerd.indd 4 28-2-2012 14:19:14 Voorwoord Het Rathenau Instituut stimuleert de discussie over technologische ont- wikkelingen die veel impact hebben op de samenleving.