The Shape of the Future — Episode V: Echo Chambers
The world is developing technology at an increasing speed, and it can be hard to keep up with these developments. So when I decided to start a series of technology articles, I wanted to simplify the current trends to allow as many people as possible to understand them. Welcome to The Shape of the Future, where we will look at the technologies shaping our tomorrows through the lens of today’s world.
The term echo chamber has been coming up in the recent years as a result of social networks and news providers fusing into one entity. Nowadays not only do websites that are essentially social networks provide news from various outlets, they also have the members spread those news among themselves by reposting, retweeting and commenting on them, making them visible to those they are connected to.
So who are we connected to? We all are connected to our friends and people we find online who are like-minded individuals. Which means the news our contacts consider relevant and worth sharing are all from people who share our ideas. The result is that within a social network, you get swamped with the articles they liked. Media that confirms their views and makes the points they are trying to make in lifestyle, political or moral discourses. When we go online, we therefore find a load of articles and media shared that also confirms our view of the world and strengthens our convictions. We build communities of shared thinking. That is what we call the echo chamber. Because everything we find there is an echo of our own choice of who we mingle with. If someone within out network is of a radically different opinion than us, we are likely to erase him as a contact, probably after a heated discussion. At some point, we will have erased all opinions that are not our own and exist in blissful ignorance of what others think.
What makes this so dangerous is that the facts we are constantly fed aren’t necessary that of everyone. Probably, not even the majority. If I believe or tend to believe, for example, that immigrants are a bad thing for Central Europe, I will be endlessly fed articles by my network that agree with this and state facts that are supporting my idea. Basically, my own echo chamber helps me radicalize my views. Opposing arguments become invisible to me and as I know I’m not alone in my opinion, I soon feel that I belong to a wider movement, sharing my idea that migration is a problem.
There can be dangerous ideas spreading this way throughout the subcommunities the social networks create. The President is an alien. An absurd idea; right? Well for how long is it absurd if I feel everybody I know shares it? My friends, people I look to for advice, all begin assembling proof that the President of my country is an alien. Hundreds of people share the view, all strengthened in it every day by each other. It alters my perception, until I probably feel it is a common known fact. Media denying it seems to be a cover-up, and actually several blogs quoted in my social circle have said exactly that. Those who ridicule my opinion and challenge it are quickly silenced by a push of a button and I remain part of the group of those who know, resisting those who try to cover up the shocking fact our President belongs to an alien race. So what does this lead to? Now that I know the President is an alien, isn’t there something we need to do about it? Should I get a gun? Should I do something about it?
Terrorists of Islamic origins have used this technique to radicalize people since the early 2000s. Right-wing parties have targeted potential recruits through these networks. Elections have been influenced with targeted campaigns. Best known is the work of Cambridge Analytica, which aimed to feed information to potential voters to make them vote for Brexit, or the UK leaving the EU. Notwithstanding the political arguments, people were fed specifically with news to strengthen their view. They were told how UK would economically gain from Brexit, a theory that obviously has turned out to be a false statement, at least in the short run. The news the UK would keep its tax privileges as if they were a member of the EU was spread systemically back then, although history was showing this was impossible to achieve in negotiations with the EU. Many people said this early on, but the people within the echo chamber were kept from such opinions intentionally, as Cambridge Analytica admitted later on.
That leads many scientists nowadays to believe that echo chambers within social networks are a dangerous tool to influence mass opinions on a scale impossible a few years back.
The echo chamber has therefore become a challenge to democracy, which is based on the principle of an informed citizen making an informed decision.
Recent discussion about elections in the USA and vaccination against Covid-19 has shown that while political parties’ access to relevant data has been limited, the system is the result of dynamics of the users themselves; and today, the echo chamber is more intact as an institution within social media than ever before.
