Am I Stuck In My Own World?
Have you ever been on Social Media and come across an advertisement that you have recently searched via a search engine or even said aloud? My first thoughts were “How the hell?” followed by “well that’s scary”. I never really understood as to how they got that information from me, but understood quickly that in the digital age we are in, anything is possible.
It wasn’t until I learnt about filter bubbles that those mind boggling questions made sense. Filter bubbles “is a state of intellectual or ideological isolation that may result from algorithms feeding us information we agree with, based on our past behaviour and search history.” (Fletcher, 2020) Digital technologies now mediate the information we receive, we have personalised web content, this is also called the semantic web. Our social media platforms and search results show us what we WANT to see, therefore, the advertisements that continued to pop up on my screen like a bad smell, is a result of my filter bubble, my digital cocoon. Your search results could vary from another due to location, gender, age, pages you’ve liked, articles you comment on and searches you make. While it can at times be beneficial to receive the information that we want, it also tends to restrict the range of standpoints and arguments we can access. “If we all disappear into our information cocoons, where we only ever encounter like-minded others and are served a highly selective media and information diet” (Burns, 2019) are we really ever broadening and expanding our knowledge? Are we endangered of entering an “echo chamber” (Fletcher, 2020), that we could be overexposed to news we agree with, potentially distorting our perception of reality, if we see too much of one side and not enough of the other? A benefit of the semantic web is that without it, we would have an overload of information that we would then have to filter through ourselves, it makes it easier to navigate the web.
Not only does this affect the information we obtain it also affects our social bubbles. For example, when you open up Instagram you will see the top section that hold stories from the people that you follow. Have you noticed that there is a recurrence of users, the same people appear to be in your top ten story icons? This isn’t based on timing of their stories, this is a prime example of filter bubbles. These are the users that you connect with on a daily basis whether you’re communicating or actively “stalking” them, through checking out there profiles or continually press on their stories in a matter of seconds of them posting. The people you are less active with on the platform, tend to be pushed back. It is a continuous algorithm that goes from platform to platform affecting what we see and how often we see it. There have been multiple petitions over the years in regards to Instagram’s new interest’s algorithm. “The order of photos and videos in your feed will be based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post” (Make Instagram Chronological Again, 2017), this was a statement released by Instagram in March 2016, confirming the new found social filter bubble.
So am I stuck in my own world? The answer is yes, unintentionally and unknowingly, since my first day of online use I have been a product of my own digital cocoon.
Bibliography
Burns, A. (2019). Are Filter Bubbles Real? In A. Burns, Are Filter Bubble Real? (pp. 11–13). John Wiley & Sons.
Fletcher, D. R. (2020). The Truth Behind Filter Bubbles: Bursting Some Myths. Retrieved from Reuters Institute: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risj-review/truth-behind-filter-bubbles-bursting-some-myths
Make Instagram Chronological Again. (2017). Retrieved from Change.Org: https://www.change.org/p/instagram-make-instagram-chronological-again
