A social echo chamber?

With the Internet becoming a major source of information, more and more people are consuming only information they want to hear

FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2011 file photo, a magnifying glass is posed over a monitor displaying a Facebook page in Munich. Facebook is proposing to end its practice of letting users vote on changes to its privacy policies, though it will continue to let users comment on proposed updates. The world's biggest social media company said in a blog post Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2012, that its voting mechanism, which is triggered only if enough people comment on proposed changes, has become a system that emphasizes quantity of responses over quality of discussion. Users tend to leave one or two-word comments objecting to changes instead of more in-depth responses. (AP Photo/dapd, Joerg Koch, File)

When it started out, the Internet was supposed to be a place where information was free and accessible to all. You could post any opinion, on anything from who you thought should be the next leader of the free world to your favourite lunch recipe. However, that seems to have changed considerably. In a study published in The Washington Post a few months ago, social scientists Walter Quattrociocchi, Antonio Scala and Cass Sunstein found quantitative evidence of how users tend to promote their favourite narratives, form polarised groups and resist information that doesn’t conform to their beliefs. It focused on how Facebook users interacted with two narratives involving conspiracy theories and science. Users belonging to different communities tended not to interact and tended to be connected only with “like-minded” friends, creating closed, non-interacting communities centred around different narratives — what the researchers called “echo chambers.” Confirmation bias accounted for users’ decisions to share certain content, creating informational cascades within their communities. The study said users tended to seek out information that strengthened their preferred narratives and to reject information that undermined it. These echo chambers are the reasons why the US election results or the Brexit shocked most users dependent on mainstream media outlets for their news on these topics. “I think most people choose to read only what they agree with. I think political polarisation has meant that you would not believe anything that goes against your political views. The echo chambers have contributed in a large way to the spread of rumours,” says Megha Iyer, a student.

She says, “The rumour about the new Rs. 2000 notes having a GPS tracker was started by someone on WhatsApp. It became so popular that some TV channels actually went on to report it as news. I have seen pictures of people tearing the notes to check if the news was true.”

IT analyst Ahalaya A. says, “With most of us getting all our news and views online, it often becomes very tough to distinguish between fact and fiction. This results in random forwards being paraded as the truth. I think it is important for people to filter information and not contribute to false information finding its way.”

The only way out seems to be rather simple – check everything you find online. The Internet and Google also can get things wrong.