One of many prime considerations relating to the harms of social media and political polarization in the USA is the worry of echo chambers or folks working in media bubbles. If individuals are solely listening to opinions they already agree with or seeing tales that align with their worldview, they could develop into extra entrenched of their beliefs, whether or not or not their beliefs mirror the actual world. They might additionally develop into simpler to govern and extra excessive.
Curiously, analysis largely reveals the overwhelming majority of individuals don’t inhabit completely sealed-off echo chambers. It’s been discovered that solely about 4 percent of individuals function in on-line echo chambers, and most people on Twitter, for instance, don’t comply with any political accounts. Basically, most individuals aren’t following politics, and lots of people who do are getting at the least just a little bit of data from totally different sides of the political spectrum. That stated, echo chambers and media bubbles are a problem as a result of they can radicalize folks, negatively have an effect on the individuals who inhabit them, and deform the broader political panorama.
“The subset of the inhabitants that does devour hyper-partisan media and inhabit echo chambers on social platforms could be very consequential,” says Magdalena Wojcieszak, a professor of communication on the College of California, Davis. “They’re extra politically , extra participatory, extra strongly partisan, and extra polarized. Due to all this stuff, they’re extra possible to participate in politics.”
Wojcieszak says as a result of these individuals are so politically concerned, they’ve a disproportionate affect on American politics. They’re typically the loudest voices within the room. She says people who find themselves politically lively prefer to have their views confirmed, to allow them to find yourself following accounts that align with their views and find yourself in echo chambers. Social media makes it simpler to search out individuals who align with them politically, and algorithms typically feed them the content material they’re going to love. All of this will finally result in folks happening rabbit holes and changing into extra politically excessive.
“It makes you extra excessive or polarized. It reinforces your attitudes. It additionally reinforces your sense of belonging to this group, and it reinforces your negativity and hostility towards different teams,” Wojcieszak says. “You suppose you’re the legit one, the great one, the virtuous one. The others are evil.”
Folks can begin to imagine they’re the one ones with the information and that the opposite aspect is illegitimate. (Maybe you’ve seen this in an individual who paid tens of billions of {dollars} for a social media firm not way back.) Wojcieszak says the method of individuals changing into radicalized can begin with them having only a few political opinions in frequent with those that are extra excessive than they’re. Having just a few stances that align with these excessive actors on-line could be the snare that pulls them into the rabbit gap.
“As a way to enter that technique of this particular person psychological and algorithmic affirmation, you do must have some extent of susceptibility to some kind of narratives from the left or the best,” Wojcieszak says. “If there are some social or political points during which you’ve got some views, that may begin the method.”
