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How Media Outlets Can Affect Public Opinion
“It’s become safer to retreat into our own bubbles”
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President Barrack Obama, 2017 Farewell Speech.
Filter Bubbles:
A ‘filter bubble’ is a term originally coined by Eli Pariser in his 2011 Novel
‘What the Internet is Hiding From You’, that describes a phenomenon of
‘intellectual isolation’ that occurs when a social media outlet utilises algorithms
to provide users with content selectively based on previous actions, such as browsing history, location, and click behaviour. 77 Content is then presented to the
user by the algorithm based on its presumptions about the material that they
would find interesting. So, if you search for ‘funny cat videos’ on TikTok, the
algorithm will begin to put videos that relate to ‘funny cat videos’ into your feed.
This same cycle can produce a ‘filter bubble’ whereby an individual is solely
exposed to news, ideas, and information that already coincide with their political
preferences. Whilst in many cases this can be unintentional, it increases the
spread of misinformation and can result in narrow perspectives and ‘intellectual isolation’. 78 As depicted in Figure 2, the green man inside the filter bubble is only
exposed to information that confirms and aligns with his green ideas, he is
completely unaware of the red , blue , and purple ideas as they are hidden by the
algorithm.
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