The echo chamber. By Max Celko
The Internet provides us with personalised search results. It’s practical. However, it means we rarely come into contact with information that challenges our view of the world. As a consequence, society is breaking down into ever smaller interest groups – which promise new forms of solidarity.
The way we find information on the Internet is being shaped more and more by the similarity principle. Algorithms analyse our online behaviour and present contents tailored to that pattern. Google, for example, personalises search results based on previous searches, links we have clicked and our geographic location. The search results are therefore not “objective”, but individually tailored to the user. Facebook operates on a similar principle: the social network’s feed only shows messages from people with whom we interact regularly. All other posts are automatically removed. Personalised filter algorithms thus create a digital echo chamber that reinforces existing opinions and interests and cuts out diverging information. Internet activist and author Eli Pariser coined the name “filter bubble” for this phenomenon. In his book of the same name, Pariser warns that the filter bubble shuts us off from new ideas, contacts and information and therefore narrows our view of the world. This has a negative impact on society, since it hampers a discourse that involves society as a whole and makes citizens more susceptible to propaganda and manipulation. In a world consisting solely of known quantities, there is nothing new to learn. Instead, we are constantly indoctrinated with our own ideas.
For example, if you enter the search term “Barack Obama” in Google, his website, Wikipedia entries etc. will normally be displayed. However, some users may possibly receive pages from the extreme right of the political spectrum, containing false assertions that Barack Obama is not an American and therefore not lawfully President – because Google recognises that these people are interested in that kind of conspiracy theory. By this means, personalised filter mechanisms propagate the division of society into niche groups, each caught in its own information bubble.
Filter bubbles in the physical world
The tendency towards social homogenisation is not restricted to the Internet alone, but is also reflected in the physical world. A study by the University of Wisconsin observed for decades how a society is changed by increasing options. It found that when societies become wealthier and lifestyles more differentiated, people start a sorting process. The social environment they actively cultivate becomes more and more homogeneous as their potential group of different friends increases. The more heterogeneous their environment becomes, the more time they spend with people like themselves – and become increasingly as- similated, since outside influences are minimised. In cities, for example, this is expressed by the gentrification of districts whose residents encapsulate themselves in their own lifestyle communities.
We are thus seeing two opposing movements: on the one hand, individualisation is producing greater cultural heterogeneity. On the other, more and more people are striving for a life in which they can cut themselves off from other people’s ways of living. Society in both the real and the digital world is therefore becoming fragmented into social subsystems which have less and less to do with one another.
This tendency could be driven even farther in the future – through ambient location services for the mobile phone, which are currently under development. These services extend the Internet into the physical world by linking digital information with geographic sites. Ambient location social networking apps such as Highlight, Glancee or Sonar, for instance, promise so-called “people discovery”: the apps monitor the user’s position by GPS and automatically display other users nearby with whom he or she has things in common: maybe similar hobbies, professions or the fact that they studied at the same university.
It is even conceivable that ambient location information will be projected directly into our field of view in future by means of augmented reality glasses. Google has already presented an initial prototype of such a device. The digital spectacles, called Google Glass, are likely to be on sale by 2014. It will then be theoretically possible to personalise perception: more information about the environment will appear depending on our interests and needs. Such ambient environment search and filter functions will transfer the logic of the filter bubble to the physical world and promote the homogenisation of social contacts.
New forms of digital solidarity
Will advancing digitalisation inevitably culminate in a fragmented society forming a mosaic of isolated parallel worlds? Or can new communication technologies reinforce social solidarity as well? There is no doubt that the Internet offers a plentiful supply of ways to provide mutual support. One example is the “Facebook Revolutions” in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, in which citizens fought for political and social reforms and more civil rights and liberties. It should not be forgotten, though, that networking via social media channels also puts activists at risk: online activities make it easier for regimes to monitor civil rights movements and make targeted moves against activists.
The Internet can also be used for solidary engagement on a smaller scale. Over the past few years, the sharing economy has seen the emergence of many new online platforms where users share products and services and provide support for each other’s projects. On the Neighborgoods and Favortree platforms, for example, users offer little favours free of charge or share domestic appliances with their neighbours. Such forms of neighbourhood support can help to combat isolation in big cities and strengthen cohesion in the community.
“Crowdfunding” platforms such as Kickstarter and Wemakeit help to make projects reality. People with ideas can use these sites to showcase their personal projects, and collect cash in the community for their imple- mentation. Similar concepts exist for development aid. The Kiva platform, for example, specialises in microcredits to support small entrepreneurs in developing countries. On Kiva, people all over the world can provide small sums to help those in poverty set up their own businesses.
The principle on which “crowdsourcing” platforms operate is swarm intelligence, or in other words the wisdom of the masses: volunteers combine to gather information on certain topics or work together on projects. Examples are the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia or the health site PatientsLikeMe, which enables people suffering from rare diseases to communicate with each other and compare therapy methods and results.
The question arises, however, as to whether Internet platforms are sufficiently effective to ensure solidarity in society. Because there is a danger that in the future solidarity will only happen on the Internet among kindred spirits: solidary communities will mostly be grouped around niche topics and will therefore succumb to filter bubble effects. Solidarity on the Internet may therefore, paradoxically, foster social fragmentation.
Another problem lies in the issue that solidary communities are not immune to the popularity principle: topics or issues that only affect a few people and cannot be marketed easily on the Internet can only expect a small amount of support. Great popularity, on the other hand, will act like a magnet to attract even more supporters. This may create a dynamic which leads to excessive dominance by certain ideas – which can have both positive and negative consequences.
We can assume, therefore, that solidarity for an entire society or actually the whole world cannot be guaranteed by citizens organising themselves via the Internet. In view of the widening gap between rich and poor and the growing divide between old and young, however, that is exactly what constitutes the major challenge of the 21st century: maintaining cohesion between increasingly unequal people in a functioning society. For that very reason, the future will still need authorities – the state, for example, or NGOs – which champion solidarity independently of special interests in society. As an additional measure, new algorithms could be created to deliberately include results that do not correspond to our – presumed – preferences. Or a kind of multiple option that allows us to select a certain filter, making sure that we would keep coming into contact with “the other guy”. Or that we would at least remain aware that we are perceiving the world through a filter. That awareness would then be an initial filter for filter bubbles.
Max Celko is a trend researcher, digital consultant and author working in New York City and Berlin. He observes new developments in media, communication, technology and society in order to turn them to use in brand strategies. He regularly publishes articles in special-interest publications and advises agencies and companies on trends and digital issues.
