[Air-L] Questioning the filter bubble

Thu Apr 6 11:57:26 PDT 2017

Also shameless self-plug for short theory paper where we argue that yes,
algorithms play a role but it's wrong to think of social media as a uniform
entity because it is actually about how you compose your network; thus
individuals have some agency in deciding who they will be connected to in
social media:

*Wohn, D. Y*., & Bowe, B. J. (2014). How social media facilitates social
construction of reality
<http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2556420.2556509&coll=DL&dl=ACM&CFID=471301430&CFTOKEN=24404336>
 In *Proceedings of companion publication of CSCW 2014, *261-264. New York,
NY: ACM [pdf
<https://arcticpenguin.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/2014-cscw_wohnbowe.pdf>]

*Wohn, D. Y*., & Bowe, B. J. (2016). Micro Agenda Setters: The Effect of
Social Media on Young Adults’ Exposure to and Attitude Toward News
<http://sms.sagepub.com/content/2/1/2056305115626750.full>. *Social Media
and Society, 2(1)*

On Sun, Apr 2, 2017 at 6:22 PM, kiran gvr <gvrkirann at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello David,
>
>
> Already some great suggestions. Below is a broad list of papers that
> discuss both sides of the broad topic of filter bubbles and polarization. I
> think it is a good addition to the above list by Alex, since these dont
> deal with fake news, necessarily.
>
> 1. If you are looking for *work specifically that questions the bubble*,
> here are a few (in chronological order).
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> Baldassarri, D., & Bearman, P. (2007). Dynamics of political
> polarization. American
> Sociological Review, 72, 784–811.
>
> David Weinberger. Echo Chambers = Democracy. In A Fine, M Sifry, A Rasiej,
> and J Levy, editors, Rebooting America, pages 32–37. Personal Democracy
> Press, New York, 2008. (argues that; 1) the Internet is too young to make
> conclusions about filter bubbles; 2) the empirical research that exists is
> very difficult to interpret; 3) fragmentation occurs in traditional media
> and in offline world; 4) democracy needs bubbles so that people in basic
> agreement can build relationships and be active in political movements.)
>
> Wojcieszak, M. E. and D. C. Mutz (2009). “Online Groups and Political
> Discourse: Do Online Discussion Spaces Facilitate Exposure to Political
> Disagreement?” In: Journal of Communication
>
>
> Brundidge, J. (2010). “Encountering ”Difference” in the contemporary public
> sphere: The
> contribution of the internet to the heterogeneity of political discussion
> networks”. In:
> Journal of Communication (internet facilitates communication)
>
>
> Kim, Y. (2011b). “The contribution of social network sites to exposure to
> political difference:
> The relationships among SNSs, online political messaging, and exposure to
> cross-cutting perspectives”. In: Computers in Human Behavior
>
>
> IDEOLOGICAL SEGREGATION ONLINE AND OFFLINE, MATTHEW GENTZKOW AND JESSE M.
> SHAPIRO (2011) (We find no evidence that the Internet is becoming more
> segregated over time.)
>
>
> Jacob Weisberg. Bubble Trouble Is Web personalization turning us into
> solipsistic twits?, 2011. URL http://goo.gl/ET1pO6 (paper from google
> saying web personalization is not responsible for bubbles)
>
>
> Kim, Y., Hsu, S.-H., & de Zúñiga, H. G. (2013). Influence of social media
> use on discussion network heterogeneity and civic engagement: The
> moderating role of personality traits. Journal of Communication, 63(3),
> 498–516
>
>
> Michael a. Beam and Gerald M. Kosicki. Personalized News Portals: Filtering
> Systems and Increased News Exposure. Journalism & Mass Communication
> Quarterly, 91(1):59–77, 2014. (investigated the impact of personalized news
> web portals on political bias and found out the average news viewer seems
> to favor news that does not have bias towards a particular perspective.)
>
>
> The digital citizen: in worship of an echo (2014)
> https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/366752/
>
>
> Messing, S., & Westwood, S. J. (2014). Selective exposure in the age of
> social media: Endorsements trump partisan source affiliation when selecting
> news online. Communication Research, 41(8), 1042–1063.
>
>
> Barberá, P., Jost, J. T., Nagler, J., Tucker, J. A., & Bonneau, R. (2015).
> Tweeting from left to right: Is online political communication more than an
> echo chamber? Psychological Science,
>
> Pablo Barbera. How Social Media Reduces Mass Political Polarization.
> Evidence from Germany, Spain, and the U.S. 2014 (found out that social
> media users receive information from a set of diverse sources, thanks to
> weak ties)
>
>
> FILTER BUBBLES, ECHO CHAMBERS, AND ONLINE NEWS CONSUMPTION (show that
> there’s no preferential media consumption) https://5harad.com/papers/
> bubbles.pdf
>
>
> Bakshy, E., S. Messing, and L. Adamic (2015). “Exposure to ideologically
> diverse news
> and opinion on Facebook”. In: Science (argue that facebook facilitates
> ideologically diverse exposure)
>
> Kieron O’Hara and David Stevens (2015). Echo Chambers and Online Radicalism
> : Assessing the Internet’ s Complicity in Violent Extremism. Policy and
> Internet (argue that the evidence for bubbles is not strong enough for
> regulation and even if bubbles exist, users can escape them. Since users
> can live in looser and multiple networks (often thanks to social media),
> they have flexibility, choice and exposure to heterogeneous points of
> view.)
>
> Bright, J. (2016). “The Social News Gap: How News Reading and News Sharing
> Diverge”. In: Journal of Communication (argues something similar to the
> above, that social media facilitates diverse exposure)
>
> Bode, L. (2016). Who sees what? Individual exposure to political
> information via social media. In G. W. Richardson (Ed.), Social media and
> politics: A new way to participate in the political process. Santa Barbara,
> CA: Praeger.
>
>
> IS THE INTERNET CAUSING POLITICAL POLARIZATION? EVIDENCE FROM DEMOGRAPHICS
> (2017)
>
> http://www.nber.org/papers/w23258.pdf (they show that polarization is
> increasing for the older demographic, who generally don’t use the internet)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> *2. Here are a few that support the existence of the bubble:*
>
> Slater, M. D. (2007). Reinforcing spirals:  The mutual influence of media
> selectivity and media effects and their impact on individual behavior and
> social identity. Communication  theory, (it is a spiral effect)
>
> McCarty, N. M., Poole, K. T., & Rosenthal, H. (2008). Polarized America:
> The dance of ideology and unequal riches. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
> (economic inequality and polarization are linked)
>
> Stroud, N. J. (2008). Media use and political predispositions: Revisiting
> the concept of selective exposure. Political Behavior, 30(3), 341–366.
>
> Iyengar, S., & Hahn, K. S. (2009). Red media, blue media: Evidence of
> ideological selectivity in media use. Journal of Communication, 59
>
> Levendusky, M. (2009). The partisan sort: How liberals became Democrats and
> conservatives became Republicans. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
>
> Lawrence, E., Sides, J., & Farrell, H. (2010). Self-segregation or
> deliberation? Blog readership, participation, and polarization in American
> politics. Perspectives on Politics, 8(1), 141–157. (social media leading to
> polarization)
>
> Abramowitz, A. I. (2011). The disappearing center: Engaged citizens,
> polarization, and American democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
>
> Stroud, N. J. (2011). Niche news: The politics of news choice. New York,
> NY: Oxford University Press (claim that polarization is due to media
> balkanization)
>
> Gentzkow, M., & Shapiro, J. M. (2011). Ideological segregation online and
> offline. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 44, 1–41.  (both media and
> personal choice responsible for polarization)
>
> Iyengar, S., Sood, G., & Lelkes, Y. (2012). Affect, not ideology: A social
> identity perspective on polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly, 76(3),
> 405–431.
>
> Murray, C. (2013). Coming apart: The state of white America, 1960–2010. New
> York, NY: Crown Forum
>
> Arceneaux, K., & Johnson, M. (2013). Changing minds or changing channels?
> Partisan news in an age of choice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
> Press. (“Balkanization of media consumption”)
>
> Levendusky, M. (2013). How partisan media polarize America. Chicago, IL:
> University of Chicago Press. (claim that polarization is due to media
> balkanization)
>
> Arceneaux, K., & Johnson, M. (2013). Changing minds or changing channels?
> Partisan news in an age of choice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
> (claim that polarization is due to public choice and not media)
>
>
> Prior, M. (2013). Media and political polarization. Annual Review of
> Political Science, 16, 101–127. (both media and personal choice responsible
> for polarization)
>
> Himelboim, I., McCreery, S., & Smith, M. (2013). Birds of a feather tweet
> together: Integrating network and content analyses to examine
> cross-ideology exposure on Twitter. Journal of Computer-Mediated
> Communication, 18(2), (social media leading to polarization)
>
> Abramowitz, A. I. (2014). Partisan nation: The rise of affective
> partisanship in the American electorate.
>
> From “information” to “knowing”: Exploring the role of social media in
> contemporary news consumption (2014) (found out that especially those who
> have a small network on Facebook are vulnerable to the filter bubble effect
> (in terms of news consumption).)
>
> Edgerly, S. (2015). Red media, blue media, and purple media: News
> repertoires in the colorful media landscape. Journal of Broadcasting &
> Electronic Media, 59, 1–21. (claim that polarization is due to public
> choice and not media)
>
> Nikolov D, Oliveira DFM, Flammini A, Menczer F. (2015) Measuring online
> social bubbles. PeerJ Computer Science (studied 4 years of communication
> data in a university network and found out that social media exposes the
> community to a narrower range of information sources)
>
> “Media Choice and Moderation: Evidence from Online Tracking Data” (2016)
> (Overall, the findings support a view that if online “echo chambers” exist,
> they are a reality for only very few people who drive the traffic and
> priorities of the most partisan outlets.)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> Sorry for dumping this unorganized list here. I hope some of it is still
> helpful. We are in the process of preparing a tutorial on this subject. I
> can provide you with a much more well formatted list of references/summary
> in a month or so, if that is still of interest.
>
>
> Regards,
> Kiran Garimella,
> PhD student
> Aalto University
> https://users.ics.aalto.fi/kiran/
>
> On Sun, Apr 2, 2017 at 11:10 PM, Sarah Ann Oates <soates at umd.edu> wrote:
>
> > Wow. More evidence that AoIR is worth a thousand lit reviews :)
> >
> > On Sun, Apr 2, 2017 at 1:44 PM, Alex Leavitt <alexleavitt at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > First:
> > >
> > > An overview of the #fakenews conference at Harvard Law earlier this
> year:
> > > https://news.northeastern.edu/2017/02/the-fake-news-
> > > phenomenon-how-it-spreads-and-how-to-fight-it/
> > >
> > > Some suggestions:
> > >
> > > Media Choice and Moderation:Evidence from Online Tracking Data. Andrew
> > > Guess, 2016. https://www.dropbox.com/s/uk005hhio3dysm8/GuessJMP.pdf?
> dl=0
> > > and coverage by Brendan Nyhan (who also does work in this area):
> > > https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/upshot/relatively-few-
> > > people-are-partisan-news-consumers-but-theyre-influential.html
> > >
> > > Yochai Benkler's 2017 research report:
> > > http://www.npr.org/2017/03/14/520087884/researchers-examine-
> > > breitbart-s-influence-on-misleading-information
> > >
> > > Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Bakshy,
> > > Messing, & Adamic, 2015. Science.
> > > http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/05/06/
> > > science.aaa1160.full
> > >
> > > Guess, Andrew M. 2015. Measure for measure: an experimental test of
> > online
> > > political media exposure. Political Analysis 23(1): 59-75.
> > > https://academic.oup.com/pan/article-abstract/23/1/59/
> > > 1448909/Measure-for-Measure-An-Experimental-Test-of-Online
> > >
> > > People trust news based on who shared it, not on who published it
> > > http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/03/avoiding-articles-from-the-
> > > creep-people-trust-news-based-on-who-shared-it-not-on-who-
> published-it/
> > > --> (2016:
> > > http://www.mediainsight.org/Pages/a-new-understanding-
> > > what-makes-people-trust-and-rely-on-news.aspx
> > > )
> > >
> > > Selective exposure in the age of social media: Endorsements trump
> > partisan
> > > source affiliation when selecting news online. Messing & Westwood,
> 2014,
> > > Communication Research.
> > > https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Solomon_Messing/
> > > publication/235763723_Selective_Exposure_in_the_Age_
> > > of_Social_Media_Endorsements_Trump_Partisan_Source_
> > > Affiliation_When_Selecting_News_Online/links/
> > 0fcfd5134c3eb42dd5000000.pdf
> > >
> > > Also related:
> > >
> > > Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election. Allcott & Gentzkow,
> > 2017.
> > > https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf
> > >
> > > Kate Starbird, @ University of Washington:
> > > https://medium.com/hci-design-at-uw/information-wars-a-
> > > window-into-the-alternative-media-ecosystem-a1347f32fd8f
> > >
> > >
> > > ---
> > >
> > > Alex Leavitt, Ph.D.
> > > Quantitative UX Researcher, Facebook Research
> > > http://alexleavitt.com
> > > Twitter: @alexleavitt <http://twitter.com/alexleavitt>
> > >
> > >
> > > On Sun, Apr 2, 2017 at 10:00 AM, Miguel, Cristina <
> > > C.Miguel at leedsbeckett.ac.uk> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi David,
> > > >
> > > > Flaxman et al. have another interesting paper about filter bubbles in
> > > > relation to news consumption:
> > > >
> > > > Flaxman, S., Goel, S., & Rao, J. (2016). Filter bubbles, echo
> chambers,
> > > > and online news consumption. Public Opinion Quarterly, 15(3),
> 209-227.
> > > > Chicago.
> > > >
> > > > Also check:
> > > >
> > > > Bozdag, E. (2013). Bias in algorithmic filtering and personalization.
> > > > Ethics and Information Technology, 15(3), 209-227.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > My 2 cents!
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Best wishes,
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Dr. Cristina Miguel
> > > > Senior Lecturer
> > > > Business School
> > > > Leeds Beckett University
> > > > https://leedsbeckett.academia.edu/CristinaMiguel
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ________________________________________
> > > > From: Air-L <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of David
> > Brake <
> > > > davidbrake at gmail.com>
> > > > Sent: 02 April 2017 15:35
> > > > To: AoIR mailing list
> > > > Subject: [Air-L] Questioning the filter bubble
> > > >
> > > > Dear all,
> > > >
> > > > I’ve asked my students what they’d like to learn about I have not
> > already
> > > > covered and several of them have been asking about filter bubbles in
> > > social
> > > > media and virtual communities. What do people recommend these days
> for
> > up
> > > > to date discussion of filter bubbles? In particular arguments on
> *both*
> > > > sides. Here are two skeptical pieces I found about the filter bubble
> > > effect
> > > > FYI
> > > >
> > > > Flaxman, S., Goel, S., & Rao, J. M. (2013). Ideological segregation
> and
> > > > the effects of social media on news consumption. Retrieved from
> > > > http://www.justinmrao.com/bubbles.pdf
> > > > Gentzkow, M., & Shapiro, J. M. (2011). Ideological Segregation Online
> > and
> > > > Offline. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(4), 1799-1839.
> > Retrieved
> > > > from http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/126/4/1799.abstract
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Dr David Brake, Researcher and Educator http://davidbrake.org/,
> > @drbrake
> > > > Author of "Sharing Our Lives Online: Risks and Exposure in Social
> > Media”
> > > > https://www.facebook.com/sharingourlivesonline <
> > > https://www.facebook.com/
> > > > sharingourlivesonline>
> > > > _______________________________________________
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> >
> > --
> > Sarah Oates
> > Professor and Senior Scholar
> > Philip Merrill College of Journalism
> > University of Maryland
> > College Park, MD 20457
> > Email: soates at umd.edu
> > Phone: 301 405 4510
> > _______________________________________________
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>
>
> --
>
> --
> Kiran
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
D. Yvette Wohn, Ph.D. (@arcticpenguin)
http://www.yvettewohn.com <http://arcticpenguin.wordpress.com>