[1]. Garrett, R. Kelly. “Echo chambers online?: Politically motivated selective exposure among Internet news users.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication2 (2009): 265-285.
[2]. Bakshy, Eytan, Solomon Messing, and Lada A. Adamic. “Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook.” Science6239 (2015): 1130-1132.
The theme of both these papers is online echo chambers that people read news or information, which favor their opinions ignoring the views of the opposing ideology. The Garrett et al. conducted a study with users recruited from two news websites, AlterNet (left-leaning) and WorldNetDaily (right-leaning). Their study was a web administered behavioral study in which participants selected articles to read in 15 minutes. The findings of the study supported the author’s hypotheses that users are more likely to view opinion-reinforcing information and will spend more time on opinion-reinforcing information.
On the other hand, Bakshy et al. performed analysis on around 10.1 million active users of Facebook who self-report their political affiliations. They examined how users interact with shared news articles by their friends as well as by algorithmically ranked news feed. Their findings were that compared with algorithmic ranking, individuals’ choices play a strong role in limiting exposure to cross-cutting content.
The Garrett et al. study was very thorough and the paper was very well written. The hypotheses were clear and the results presented backed up those hypothesis. But they assumed that everyone who visited AlterNet was left-leaning and WorldNetDaily visitors were right-leaning without any evidence to support this claim. Secondly, this sample does not ensure that it is representative of the population. Also, the length of news article should have been mentioned because the read time per story ranged from 4 seconds to 122 seconds. How can it be 4 seconds? Also, can we make a claim about read time from such study? It is highly likely that general reading patterns of people can be vastly different than the ones under study because they know that they are under experiment. It will be interesting to compare the results with people who aren’t aware that they are under study. Finally, the study is focused on three issues (gay marriage, social security reform, and civil liberties), which can have political affiliation, but will this study hold true for sports or other benign issues?
The Bakshy et al. study was interesting but had a huge limitation that it recorded engagements based on clicks. They mention that users might be reading the displayed summaries but not clicking it. This limitation makes me question the results for a reason that just because user is not clicking on opinion-challenging information does not mean that it will create an echo chamber. It is possible that user is aware of the other side of story but it is only natural that people read more of what they like and hence clicking on opinion-reinforcing information. I also felt that study on neutral people should have been more thorough and one out of context research idea that popped in my mind while reading the paper was that it will be interesting to see how ranking algorithms perform in case of neutral people? Do ranking algorithms play a role in creating echo chambers? It is highly likely that a neutral person has majority of left (or right) leaning friends and therefore, will encounter respective information and as a result ranking algorithm might confuse him with left (or right) leaning person. This seems like an interesting research direction to me.
