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@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@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).
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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)
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*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.)
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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@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@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,
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@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@listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of David Brake < davidbrake@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
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