Our perception of reality - and of the choices that we have in life - has always been influenced by our surroundings: education, friends, favourite newspaper, Facebook feed etc. On the one hand this allows us to live our values among like-minded people but on the other, it can oversimplify reality and deceive us. An echo chamber is a group situation where information, ideas and beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition, while different or competing views are censored, disallowed or otherwise under-represented. This slideshow is summarising pros and cons of Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles in Media and Social Networks.

1. Digressive Prospects
February 2016

2. Two books

3. Echo Chamber Definition
An echo chamber is a group situation where information, ideas and beliefs are
amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition, while different or
competing views are censored, disallowed or otherwise under-represented.

4. Filter Bubble Definition
A filter bubble is a unique universe of information for each of us.
Characteristics:
- You’re alone in it.
- It is invisible.
- You don’t choose to enter the bubble.
(The Filter Bubble, p. 9)

5. Examples

6. Echo chambers:
Friends and Family

7. Echo chambers:
Neighbourhoods and Nations

8. Echo chambers:
Newspapers, TV, etc.

9. Filter Bubbles:
Streaming, e-commerce websites

10. Filter Bubbles:
Facebook feed
“Increasingly, we’ll rely on a mix of
nonprofessional editors (our friends
and colleagues) and software code to
figure out what to watch, read, and
see.”
(The Filter Bubble, p. 52)

11. Online Echo Chambers
Pros and Cons

12. In relation to our intelligence and creativity
PROS
● More information available online, but only if you search for it.
● More relevant information served in echo chambers, which can increase our knowledge.
● More communication with like-minded people, which can encourage our creativity.
CONS
● “If you like this, you’ll like that” can be a useful tool, but it’s not a source for creative ingenuity. By
definition, ingenuity comes from the juxtaposition of ideas that are far apart, and relevance comes
from finding ideas that are similar. (The Filter Bubble, p. 93)
● “Producing novelty requires a lot of divergent, generative thinking” (The Filter Bubble, p. 103)
● “The Web provides a convenient and compelling supplement to personal memory, but when we
start using the Web as a substitute for personal memory, bypassing the inner processes of
consolidation, we risk emptying our minds of their riches.” (The Shallows, p. 192)

13. In relation to our identity
PROS
● Communication with like-minded people can help us building our identity.
● Echo chambers can help us gaining more confidence in our beliefs.
CONS
● “To be the author of your life, professor Yochai Benkler argues, you have to be aware of a diverse
array of options and lifestyle” (The Filter Bubble, p. 16)
● “You can get stuck in a static, ever-narrowing version of yourself - an endless you-loop.” (The Filter
Bubble, p. 16)
● “Every intellectual technology embodies an intellectual ethic, a set of assumptions about how the
human mind works or should work.” (The shallows, p. 45)
○ Your identity shapes your media -> but media also shape identity (The Filter Bubble, p. 112)
○ Living in the present -> “How we behave is a balancing act between our future and present
selves.” (The Filter Bubble, p. 117)

14. In relation to machines and algorithms
PROS
● Algorithms save us time searching for information.
● Algorithms can be better at searching information than us.
CONS
● “The algorithms that orchestrate our ads are starting to orchestrate our lives” (The Filter Bubble, p.
9)
● Overfitting: algorithms can have a wrong, oversimplifying representation of our interests (The
Filter Bubble, p. 134)

15. In relation to public debate
PROS
● Echo chambers encourage expression of opinions among like-minded people.
CONS
● “The most serious political problem posed by filter bubbles is that they make it increasingly
difficult to have a public argument” (The Filter Bubble, p155)
● “Personalization has given us something very different: a public sphere sorted and manipulated by
algorithms, fragmented by design, and hostile to dialogue” (The Filter Bubble, p164)

16. What can be done?

17. Some recommendations from Eli Pariser
- “By stretching your interests in new directions, you give the personalizing code more breadth to
work with”. (The Filter Bubble, p. 223)
- “We ought to be able to get a better sense of who these sites think we are.” (The Filter Bubble, p.
231)
- “Companies to make filtering systems more transparent to the public, so that it’s possible to
have a discussion about how they’re exercising their responsibilities in the first place.” (The
Filter Bubble, p. 229)
- “Personalized ads should disclose to users how they’re personalized.” (The Filter Bubble, p.
232)
- Algorithms should be constantly testing their hypothesis (The Filter Bubble, p. 134)
- “Design filtering systems to expose people to topics outside their normal experience.” (The Filter
Bubble, p235)

18. Better communicate personalized content
facebook
Pinterest

19. More info
Digressive Prospects page on Facebook