In last week’s issue of the Fillmore County Journal, there was a Letter to the Editor crafted by Aaron Bishop of Harmony and he concluded his piece with the statement “Avoid echo chambers. Cheers.”
I’ve been meaning to write a commentary about echo chambers, a newer phrase (to me) I first heard on Minnesota Public Radio about two months ago.
During a talk show on MPR, one caller explained how echo chambers have evolved as a result of societal and technological changes.
The more we participate in all that the Internet has to offer, and particularly social media such as Facebook, the more we become profiled by our “likes” and even our friends. Facebook’s format feeds into the evolution of echo chambers.
The more we join groups and like pages, the more our news feeds become full of only like-minded content that is generally suitable to our ideals. And this particular upcoming election has encouraged so much rage and discontent expressed on social media, that I think it has actually become unhealthy.
People will “unfriend” those who offend them based on their differing beliefs. Even friend selection is impacted by what has been coined as echo chambers.
People will like and share links to stories that appear to be completely false based on the discredited source, because they are aligned with what they want to believe is true. My favorite (sarcasm) misleading content on Facebook are the posts that say something like “Wait until you see what happened” in reference to some sort of surprise. Yes, Facebook has become tarnished with “click bait.”
Aside from becoming a website bloated with sponsored content, Facebook has also helped people establish an echo chamber of self-imposed radicalization. Facebook enables people to become more narrow-minded in their thinking. Sadly, the more we engage with content on Facebook, the more this self-censored website skews our perceptions.
Eventually, we end up with a news feed that resembles our beliefs, which is just the way we like it, right?
As Aaron Bishop concluded in his Letter to the Editor, avoid echo chambers. Cheers.