It was 2016 November, 8.
My friends and I are in the studio watching the 2016 American Presidential Election. After 11:30, the election situation went to an end, and everyone is depressed. The streets in Manhattan are like scenes in the Walking Dead. However, when I called my friend in Georgia, I was shocked when he told me ”I knew he would win.” He said everyone is celebrating, people are happy to take pictures with full-size trump posters, there are parties everywhere. My friend showed me his Facebook page; it is all filled with Trump supporters’ posts about negative news about Hillary Clinton. I was shocked by what I saw because is so different from my own Facebook page and anyone’s in New York.
This situation is call echo chamber or filter bubbles; it is due to the idea of personalization and customization on social media. Information flow is very similar to that of the stratospheric atmosphere; this is where it gets its name from.
In a world ever more addicted to and controlled by social media, are we inevitably slaves to our own online echo chambers.
According to Pew Research Center–Key trends in social and digital news media, first, it showed that two-thirds of Americans (67%) get at least some news on social media, and the gap between television and online news consumption is narrowing. This says the traditionally considered reliable and objective information is slowly shifting to highly customized information to fit with what people prefer to see.
Whether it is on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or WeChat; people tend to only keep track or beware of information which matched their point of view, and blocked their opponents. Moreover, social media algorithm serve as the god who makes those chose for us base on the data they collect of us. This is why whenever we open our social media page, we often see similar information or what we would like to see; we always feel that every information that we read are all important information. Over time, we’ll believe that diversified sources of information, but in fact, every day, we see what we love to see, and what we are familiar with. We put up a thick wall around us without even knowing it.
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