[Air-L] Questioning the filter bubble

Sun Apr 23 18:52:13 PDT 2017

Hi Chris and All,

Please excuse the self-promotion, but I've written about different mechanisms of curation (i.e., filtering). The article might provide some useful language and a framework to think about filter bubbles and related issues.

Curation: A Theoretical Treatment

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1203972?journalCode=rics20

Best,

Jenny

Jenny L. Davis

Lecturer, School of Sociology

The Australian National University

Co-Editor: Cyborgology<https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/> <https://twitter.com/Jenny_L_Davis>

Twitter: @Jenny_L_Davis<https://twitter.com/Jenny_L_Davis>

________________________________
From: Air-L <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of Chris Peterson <chris at cpeterson.org>
Sent: Monday, April 24, 2017 7:35:07 AM
To: DY Wohn
Cc: AoIR mailing list
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Questioning the filter bubble

Going to jump out from lurking this list to say what I’m sure has occurred to others, i.e. that I’d love for a literature review of this question, not only for teaching but also citation purposes.

I’m currently revising an article on a distinct-but-maybe-related phenomenon (i.e., that CIPA-compliant Internet filtering in public institutions is almost unbelievably inconsistent across institutions nominally governed by the same standards), and I’m trying to figure out how to link the possible political consequences of that inconsistency with the kinds of inconsistencies alleged across e.g. social media, but finding it nearly impossible to even describe the phenomenon this thread is questioning before I can get to the point of questioning it!

I’m working through the papers that y’all have so helpfully shared, but I’d love it especially if anyone has seen any good encapsulations of the questions/controversies at stake that I can reference to help link these concepts, because if I try to do that in this piece I suspect I’m going to run out of word count before I even get to the thing I’m trying to write about.

In the meantime, thanks for being always-helpful, AoIR.

— Chris

> On Apr 6, 2017, at 2:57 PM, DY Wohn <yvettewohn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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>
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