Exposure to Diverse Information on Facebook

Echo Chamber andExposure to Diverse Information on Facebook

Alex Tang & Juli Whetstone

Overview: Exposure to Diverse Information on Facebook

• Does social media lead to “echo chambers?”

• where people only come into contact with information from like-minded individuals

• Do social media algorithms create “filter bubbles?”

• only ideologically appealing content comes to the top

• Two counterexamples to these ideas:

• Rethinking Information Diversity in Network (Eytan 2012)

• Selective Exposure in the Age of Social Media (Messing & Westwood 2014)

What percentage of your Facebook posts are your own content compared to what you share?

Echo Chamber in Media

In media, an echo chamber is a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an "enclosed" system...https://vimeo.com/30865415

Do you think that your newsfeed is filled with posts that are similar to your views?

Findings

• People have friends with opposing political ideology

• Newsfeed content reflects those diverse views

• 23% of people’s friends claim to have an opposing political ideology

• 29.5% of hard news content that friends share cuts across ideological lines

• 28.5% of hard news encountered of what people see in the newsfeed cuts across ideological lines

• 24.9% of hards news content that people actually clicked on was cross-cutting

Do those percentages actually reflect diverse views?

https://research.facebook.com/blog/1393382804322065/exposure-to-diverse-information-on-facebook/

Birds of a Feather…

• Similar people associate with one another

• Friends more likely to be similar in age, educational attainment, occupation, and geography

• On Facebook: Political affiliation of your friend.

https://research.facebook.com/blog/1393382804322065/exposure-to-diverse-information-on-facebook/

Have you realized/considered this phenomenon before?

Selective Exposure

• Exposure potential: we see what our friends share.

• Other factors: Facebook algorithm, etc.

• Article selected.

Does you think the echo chamber effect is different with other platforms like Instagram & Twitter?

However...

“By showing that people are exposed to a substantial amount of

content from friends with opposing viewpoints, our findings

contrast concerns that people might ‘list and speak only to the

like-minded’ while online”

Rethinking Information Diversity in Networks

• A lot of the information we are exposed to on social media comes from weak ties (friends we interact with less often)

• Suggests that social media may actually increase the spread of novel information and diverse viewpoints

https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/rethinking-information-diversity-in-networks/10150503499618859

https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/rethinking-information-diversity-in-networks/10150503499618859

The study proposes that strong ties are similar so they are more likely to check out the same websites. Weak ties are more dissimilar so they tend to visit different websites

Finding of Diversity in Networks

• Information we consume and share on Facebook is more diverse than people may think

• We are exposed to and spread more information from our distant contacts than our close friends

• Since these people are different than us in bulk of info comes from different perspectives

How do you interact with the political information shared by your weak ties?

Selective Exposure in the Age of Social Media:Non-selective news aggregation services (?)

Social Endorsement

http://crx.sagepub.com/content/41/8/1042

? ? ?

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-chances-for-Sen-Bernie-Sanders-in-the-2016-U-S-presidential-election

Does that mean “echo chamber” is an unnecessary worry?

So, “echo chamber” is an only limited effect in the department of social media exposure.

where different or competing views are censored, disallowed or otherwise underrepresented.

In media, an echo chamber is a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an "enclosed" system...

Final question:

What are the issues/concerns with two of these articles being published on Facebook?