Impeachment: A great time to break out of your news bubble
As you watch and listen to impeachment news and commentary, how much thought are you giving to the information you're consuming? Does it present the impeachment as a sham and a hoax, engineered by sore losers to disenfranchise 63 million U.S. voters? Or, does the coverage insist that the impeachment was necessary to combat a lawless, out of control, delusional traitor who puts himself before his country?
The answer, of course, depends on which media bubble you live in. Media bubbles (or news bubbles) seal in media consumers so that they end up reading only stories that are consistent with their world view.
These news bubbles are partially constructed by individuals who choose media that confirm their biases (liberals watching Rachel Maddow, conservatives tuning in to FOX News). Bubbles are also partially created by social media which feed us stories that confirm our biases. Click on an anti-Trump story, and you’ll get many similar stories fed to you on Facebook, for example.
A related concept is the echo chamber. Internet activist Eli Pariser defined echo chamber as a “personal, unique universe of information that you live in online. And what’s in your filter bubble depends on who you are, and it depends on what you do. But the thing is that you don’t decide what gets in. And more importantly, you don’t actually see what gets edited out.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/problem-social-media-reinforcement-bubbles-what-you-can-do-about-ncna1063896)
The important thing about an echo chamber, writes media analysis C. Thi Nguyen, it that it “leads its members to distrust everybody on the outside of that chamber. And that means that an insider’s trust for other insiders can grow unchecked.” Citing examples like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, he writes that “an echo chamber is a lot like a cult. Echo chambers isolate their members, not by cutting off their lines of communication to the world, but by changing whom they trust. And echo chambers aren’t just on the right. I’ve seen echo chambers on the left, but also on parenting forums, nutritional forums and even around exercise methods.” (http://theconversation.com/the-problem-of-living-inside-echo-chambers-110486)
These media bubbles create many problems for society. Bubbles have facilitated what researchers call Cyberbalkanization, or “the loss of shared experiences and values (which) may be harmful to the structure of democratic societies as well as decentralized organizations.” (https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/dec/04/echo-chambers-are-dangerous-we-must-try-to-break-free-of-our-online-bubbles)
Other corrosive impacts of media bubbles include overestimating the prevalence of our perspective—thinking that everyone agrees with us. “Our brain constructs a model of the world from interactions with our environment. If all our interactions are one-sided, then our brain’s model will be biased,” noted Don Vaughn, a neuroscientist at the department of Psychology at UCLA.
Additionally, the bubbles decrease empathy for those with whom we disagree. “My neuroscience research on empathy underscores the point that simple notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ [affect] how our brain processes the pain of another. When ‘they’ are in pain, we simulate their experience less, and show less empathy,” said Vaughn. (https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/problem-social-media-reinforcement-bubbles-what-you-can-do-about-ncna1063896)
So, what can we do to break out of our news bubbles?
1. Be skeptical about the information you hear and see, and be your own fact checker. Analyze the news you consume. Is it biased? What’s the message beneath the news? What news and viewpoints aren’t being covered? Then, analyze the veracity of the news you’re consuming, using fact checkers like Politifact, FactCheck.org, Fact Check NPR, and Snopes.com.
2. Seek out those with differing opinions, both in person and online. Yes, online discourse can often be coarse, but you can still find those who share your commitment to hearing many sides. Seek out interest groups on all sides of issue, and look for hashtags on Twitter that both favor and oppose your position (#MoscowMitch and #WitchHunt, for example). This also means not deleting from your social media those with whom you disagree.
3. Consume news from across the political spectrum. In my classes, students are required to watch and analyze both Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity. I do this myself. I can’t guarantee that you won’t throw things at the TV, but I will promise you will be better informed by learning about different perspectives.
Acknowledging biases in the news we consume, and taking steps to educate ourselves from different perspectives, are invaluable first steps towards establishing civil political discourse in our country.
As you watch and listen to impeachment news and commentary, how much thought are you giving to the information you're consuming? Does it present the impeachment as a sham and a hoax, engineered by sore losers to disenfranchise 63 million U.S. voters? Or, does the coverage insist that the impeachment was necessary to combat a lawless, out of control, delusional traitor who puts himself before his country?
The answer, of course, depends on which media bubble you live in. Media bubbles (or news bubbles) seal in media consumers so that they end up reading only stories that are consistent with their world view.
These news bubbles are partially constructed by individuals who choose media that confirm their biases (liberals watching Rachel Maddow, conservatives tuning in to FOX News). Bubbles are also partially created by social media which feed us stories that confirm our biases. Click on an anti-Trump story, and you’ll get many similar stories fed to you on Facebook, for example.
A related concept is the echo chamber. Internet activist Eli Pariser defined echo chamber as a “personal, unique universe of information that you live in online. And what’s in your filter bubble depends on who you are, and it depends on what you do. But the thing is that you don’t decide what gets in. And more importantly, you don’t actually see what gets edited out.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/problem-social-media-reinforcement-bubbles-what-you-can-do-about-ncna1063896)
The important thing about an echo chamber, writes media analysis C. Thi Nguyen, it that it “leads its members to distrust everybody on the outside of that chamber. And that means that an insider’s trust for other insiders can grow unchecked.” Citing examples like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, he writes that “an echo chamber is a lot like a cult. Echo chambers isolate their members, not by cutting off their lines of communication to the world, but by changing whom they trust. And echo chambers aren’t just on the right. I’ve seen echo chambers on the left, but also on parenting forums, nutritional forums and even around exercise methods.” (http://theconversation.com/the-problem-of-living-inside-echo-chambers-110486)
These media bubbles create many problems for society. Bubbles have facilitated what researchers call Cyberbalkanization, or “the loss of shared experiences and values (which) may be harmful to the structure of democratic societies as well as decentralized organizations.” (https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/dec/04/echo-chambers-are-dangerous-we-must-try-to-break-free-of-our-online-bubbles)
Other corrosive impacts of media bubbles include overestimating the prevalence of our perspective—thinking that everyone agrees with us. “Our brain constructs a model of the world from interactions with our environment. If all our interactions are one-sided, then our brain’s model will be biased,” noted Don Vaughn, a neuroscientist at the department of Psychology at UCLA.
Additionally, the bubbles decrease empathy for those with whom we disagree. “My neuroscience research on empathy underscores the point that simple notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ [affect] how our brain processes the pain of another. When ‘they’ are in pain, we simulate their experience less, and show less empathy,” said Vaughn. (https://www.nbcnews.com/better/lifestyle/problem-social-media-reinforcement-bubbles-what-you-can-do-about-ncna1063896)
So, what can we do to break out of our news bubbles?
1. Be skeptical about the information you hear and see, and be your own fact checker. Analyze the news you consume. Is it biased? What’s the message beneath the news? What news and viewpoints aren’t being covered? Then, analyze the veracity of the news you’re consuming, using fact checkers like Politifact, FactCheck.org, Fact Check NPR, and Snopes.com.
2. Seek out those with differing opinions, both in person and online. Yes, online discourse can often be coarse, but you can still find those who share your commitment to hearing many sides. Seek out interest groups on all sides of issue, and look for hashtags on Twitter that both favor and oppose your position (#MoscowMitch and #WitchHunt, for example). This also means not deleting from your social media those with whom you disagree.
3. Consume news from across the political spectrum. In my classes, students are required to watch and analyze both Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity. I do this myself. I can’t guarantee that you won’t throw things at the TV, but I will promise you will be better informed by learning about different perspectives.
Acknowledging biases in the news we consume, and taking steps to educate ourselves from different perspectives, are invaluable first steps towards establishing civil political discourse in our country.
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