From filter bubble to social divide

2021 ◽  
pp. 79-102
Author(s):  
Robert A. Fahey ◽  
Stefano Camatarri
Keyword(s):  
Information ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Yuta Nemoto ◽  
Vitaly Klyuev

While users benefit greatly from the latest communication technology, with popular platforms such as social networking services including Facebook or search engines such as Google, scientists warn of the effects of a filter bubble at this time. A solution to escape from filtered information is urgently needed. We implement an approach based on the mechanism of a metasearch engine to present less-filtered information to users. We develop a practical application named MosaicSearch to select search results from diversified categories of sources collected from multiple search engines. To determine the power of MosaicSearch, we conduct an evaluation to assess retrieval quality. According to the results, MosaicSearch is more intelligent compared to other general-purpose search engines: it generates a smaller number of links while providing users with almost the same amount of objective information. Our approach contributes to transparent information retrieval. This application helps users play a main role in choosing the information they consume.


Author(s):  
Giampaolo Bonomi ◽  
Nicola Gennaioli ◽  
Guido Tabellini

Abstract We present a theory of identity politics that builds on two ideas. First, when policy conflict renders a certain social divide—economic or cultural—salient, a voter identifies with her economic or cultural group. Second, the voter slants her beliefs toward the stereotype of the group she identifies with. We obtain three implications. First, voters’ beliefs are polarized along the distinctive features of salient groups. Second, if the salience of cultural policies increases, cultural conflict rises, redistributive conflict falls, and polarization becomes more correlated across issues. Third, economic shocks hurting conservative voters may trigger a switch to cultural identity, causing these voters to demand less redistribution. We discuss U.S. survey evidence in light of these implications.


Author(s):  
Kodai Tsukahara Et.al

Current information recommendation systems obtain users’ preferences from Web browsing histories and activities such as purchase of products, and efficiently provide the users with their preferable information. In such a case, however, the same or similar information is always recommended, which is called filter bubble and it decreases the users’ satisfaction to the systems. If information recommendation systems could provide users with something surprising and useful as output information, the user’s satisfaction to the systems would drastically increase. Therefore, “serendipity” is paid attention to in this research. In this paper, a new information recommendation system using a concept-based information retrieval is proposed to provide the users with serendipitous information. In this system, concepts which describe features or roles of items are input instead of the items themselves, and information which can meet the concepts are output as candidates of serendipitous information. The serendipitous information is extracted from the output information using the criteria which are the indexes of serendipity defined in this research. Through the evaluation experiment, it is revealed that the proposed system achieves the accuracy of 70% for the serendipitous information determination and the accuracy of 100% for the information retrieval, which are satisfactory for this research purpose.


2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-220
Author(s):  
Hendrik Overkamp ◽  
Barbara Sandfuchs
Keyword(s):  

Die Diskussion um die Filter Bubble und möglichen Regulierungsbedarf ist mit Blick auf den Entwurf des EU Digitalen Dienste Gesetzes verstärkt zu führen. Der Begriff der Filter Bubble beschreibt ein Phänomen, das dadurch entsteht, dass Plattformen wie Google den Nutzern mittels Algorithmen personalisierte Inhalte anzeigen. Diese Filterung führt zur Schaffung eines eigenen Informationsuniversums für jeden Nutzer, welches auch als „Filter Bubble“ bezeichnet wird. Dies beeinträchtigt den Erkenntnisprozess und kann folglich zu Gefahren für die Demokratie führen, die Regulierungsbedarf hervorrufen können.


Author(s):  
Richard Alba ◽  
Nancy Foner

This chapter describes how immigrant religion generally has become a more significant social divide, a greater challenge to integration, and a more common source of conflict with mainstream institutions and practices in Western Europe than in the United States. There are three main reasons for this. Of paramount importance are basic demographic facts. The religious backgrounds of immigrants in Western Europe and the United States are different, mostly Christian in the United States as compared to Western Europe, where a large proportion is Muslim. Muslims of immigrant origin in Western Europe also have a lower socioeconomic profile than those in the United States. Moreover, Western European native majorities have more trouble recognizing claims based on religion because they are more secular than religiously involved Americans.


Author(s):  
Joel Thiessen ◽  
Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme

This book examines the nearly one-quarter of American and Canadian adults who say they have no religion. Who are they? Why, and where, has this population grown? How do religious nones in the United States and Canada compare? What are the dynamics of being a religious none in contemporary America and Canada, and how does this willful distance from organized religion impact other aspects of daily and social life? This book turns to survey and interview data to answer these questions against the backdrop of three theoretical frameworks in the sociology of religion: stages of decline, individualization and spiritualization, and polarization. The central claim is that there is a gradual religious decline happening in stages across time and generations and at different rates in various social, cultural, and regional contexts, leading to the rise of religious nones. Yet, this form of decline does not imply the disappearance of all things religious and spiritual, as a diversity of spiritual beliefs and practices along with nonbelief and secular attitudes coexist and are constantly evolving. The decline of organized religion among large segments of the American and Canadian populations also does not mean that religion is necessarily less relevant for everyday interactions and social life. If anything, that there are now large groups of religious and nonreligious individuals coexisting in both countries could mean there is a greater social divide and distance in moral and political values and behaviors along religious/nonreligious lines, as well as in interactions and attitudes between the religious and nonreligious.


2019 ◽  
pp. 228-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Dutton ◽  
Bianca C. Reisdorf ◽  
Grant Blank ◽  
Elizabeth Dubois ◽  
Laleah Fernandez

Concern over filter bubbles, echo chambers, and misinformation on the Internet are not new. However, as noted by Howard and Bradshaw (Chapter 12), events around the 2016 US presidential election and the UK’s Brexit referendum brought these concerns up again to near-panic levels, raising questions about the political implications of the algorithms that drive search engines and social media. To address these issues, the authors conducted an extensive survey of Internet users in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the US, asking respondents how they use search, social media, and other media for getting information about politics, and what difference these media have made for them. Their findings demonstrate that search is one among many media gateways and outlets deployed by those interested in politics, and that Internet users with an interest in politics and search skills are unlikely to be trapped in a filter bubble, or cocooned in a political echo chamber.


2020 ◽  
pp. 016344372097231
Author(s):  
Hao Cao

Social movement-media/public interaction has been largely examined from the lens of “asymmetric dependency” in which both movements’ representation and self-understanding are mainly shaped by their media and public opinion environment. The introduction of digital technologies, however, has diversified this discursive environment and seemed to reverse the uneven dynamics. Using a case study of a protest campaign organized by Chinese American immigrants, this study demonstrates a new pattern of movement-media/public dynamics that goes beyond the “asymmetric dependency” model or its obverse. In the aftermath of a Chinese American police officer who shot a black man to death, Chinese immigrants stood with him and deliberated on WeChat, a China-based digital platform engineered like a “walled garden.” The technolinguistic enclosure of the platform facilitated the development of a separate interpretative universe in the WeChatsphere vis-à-vis the one in the mediasphere. Later, even when immigrant protesters confronted the public in the Twittersphere, they continued talking past each other. By unpacking the decoupling processes between movements and the media/public, this study shifts the research focus from understanding their interaction to examining their disengagement, as well as the “filter bubble” effects that contribute to contemporary fragmentation and polarization in political and civic engagements.


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