The Filter in Our (?) Heads: Digital Media and Polarisation
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Keynote presented at the Norwegian Media Research Conference, Stavanger, 13 Oct. 2022.
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The Filter in Our (?) Heads: Digital Media and Polarisation
- 1. CRICOS No.00213J The Filter in Our (?) Heads: Digital Media and Polarisation Prof. Axel Bruns Australian Laureate Fellow QUT Digital Media Research Centre Guest Professor, Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft und Medienforschung, Universität Zürich a.bruns@qut.edu.au | @snurb_dot_info
- 4. CRICOS No.00213J (McCoy & Somer, 2019) Pernicious Polarisation
- 10. CRICOS No.00213J For too many of us it’s become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods, or on college campuses, or places of worship, or especially our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. — farewell speech, 11 Jan. 2017 (https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/news/a19883/president-obamas-farewell-address-best-quotes/)
- 11. CRICOS No.00213J Can we simply blame our platforms and their algorithms? Filter bubbles? Echo chambers? (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eli_Pariser,_author_of_The_Filter_Bubble_-_Flickr_-_Knight_Foundation.jpg)
- 13. CRICOS No.00213J
- 14. The Australian Twittersphere, 2016 4m known Australian accounts Network of follower connections Filtered for degree ≥1000 255k nodes (6.4%), 61m edges Edges not shown in graph (From Bruns, Moon, Münch, and Sadkowsky, 2017.)
- 15. 716,076 accounts with degree ≥1 32,534,829 follower/followee relationships between them Network visualisation: Force Atlas 2 in Gephi, edges not shown Node colour + size reflects indegree (spline applied) The Norwegian Twittersphere (2016) Bruns, A., & Enli, G. (2018). The Norwegian Twittersphere: Structure and Dynamics. Nordicom Review, 39(1), 129– 148. https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2018-0006
- 16. 716,076 accounts with degree ≥1 32,534,829 follower/followee relationships between them Node colours: Gephi, modularity resolution 0.5 Cluster assignments by qualitative evaluation Blogs & Humour Football Netizens Politics Music & Radio National News & Culture Online Entertainment Comedy Travel & Leisure Politics: Environment Cultural Debate Science & Innovation Social Politics Religion & Politics Business & Media Trøndelag Sunnmøre Photography Hordaland & Bergen Gambling Sexuality The Norwegian Twittersphere (2016)
- 17. Teen Culture Aspirational Sports Netizens Arts & Culture Politics Television Fashion Popular Music Food & Drinks Agriculture Activism Porn Education Cycling News & Generic Hard Right Progressive South Australia Celebrities Horse Racing 4m known Australian accounts Network of follower connections Filtered for degree ≥1000 255k nodes (6.4%), 61m edges Edges not shown in graph
- 20. CRICOS No.00213J Ready access to information enables spread of ‘fake news’, hyperpartisanship, and polarisation. (But also social connection and community support.) Hyperpartisans, Hyperconnected (https://twitter.com/bigfudge212121/status/1259317174776115201)
- 21. CRICOS No.00213J The problem with an extraterrestrial- conspiracy mailing list isn’t that it’s an echo chamber; it’s that it thinks there’s a conspiracy by extraterrestrials. — David Weinberger, Salon, 21 Feb. 2004 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:David_Weinberger.jpg)
- 23. CRICOS No.00213J Hate-Reading Gentzkow, M., & Shapiro, J. M. (2011). Ideological Segregation Online and Offline. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126, 1799–1839. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjr044 Also see: Roberts, J., & Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2020). Breitbart’s Attacks on Mainstream Media: Victories, Victimhood, and Vilification. In Affective Politics of Digital Media. Routledge.
- 24. CRICOS No.00213J Can We Blame ‘Fake News’?
- 26. CRICOS No.00213J ‘Fake News’ Networks on Facebook Posts containing FakeNIX links shared from other Facebook spaces, 2016-21 (from Angus, Bruns, Hurcombe, and Harrington, 2021). Spanish French Berniecrats US Progressives US Conservatives Indian Italian German climate change denial alternative medicine alternative health Brazilian
- 28. CRICOS No.00213J Engagement with Sky News Australia Videos on Facebook Nodes: public pages, groups, verified profiles / videos in posts Size: weighted degree Colour: Australian / United States / international / other video theme (From Copland, Graham, and Bruns, 2021.) Large number of spaces, mostly public groups related to US politics, sharing a smaller number of videos, predominantly from YouTube, with mostly American themes. Small number of Australian spaces, some official Sky News-affiliated pages, sharing many videos, predominantly from Facebook, with mostly Australian themes. Diverse range of spaces, including public groups and public pages promoting conspiracy theories and COVID-19 misinformation, sharing videos from both YouTube and Facebook, with international and other themes.
- 29. CRICOS No.00213J Social, fringe, and mainstream media are intensely interconnected. (See Bruns, Hurcombe, Harrington, and Jude, 2021.)
- 31. CRICOS No.00213J This, but with a different system of coordinates, also drives conspiracy theories. Weaponising Media Literacy (https://britannicalearn.com/blog/britannica-tackles-media-literacy/)
- 32. CRICOS No.00213J ‘Fake News’ Is the Symptom, Not the Cause Put simply, studying fans and anti-fans in politics shifts the question from which news and information we believe to which news and information we choose to believe. — Cornel Sandvoss, “The Politics of Against” (2019) (…and to share!)
- 33. CRICOS No.00213J (How would we know?) Is It Getting Worse?
- 37. Park, Sora, Caroline Fisher, Kieran McGuinness, Jee Young Lee, and Kerry McCallum. 2021. Digital News Report: Australia 2021. Canberra: News and Media Research Centre. https://doi.org/10.25916/KYGY-S066. News Audience Polarisation
- 39. {comparison across political systems} News Engagement Polarisation Faris, Robert, Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler. 2017. “Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.” Berkman Klein Center Research Publication 2017–6. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3019414.
- 40. Retweet network of #RoboDebt Retweet network of the 18C debate Dehghan, Ehsan. 2020. “Networked Discursive Alliances: Antagonism, Agonism, and the Dynamics of Discursive Struggles in the Australian Twittersphere.” PhD, Queensland University of Technology. https://doi.org/10.5204/thesis.eprints.174604. Public (Social Media) Discourse Polarisation
- 41. CRICOS No.00213J Researching Polarisation and Hyperpartisanship
- 42. CRICOS No.00213J The Filter in Our (?) Heads • Understanding polarisation: • How might we assess levels of polarisation – over time, across countries, between groups, across platforms? • What types of polarisation are there – issue-based, ideological, affective, identity-based? • How do individuals slide into hyperpartisanship, and how can this be reversed? • How do hyperpartisan groups process information that challenges their worldviews? • What processes drive their dissemination of mis/disinformation, conspiracy theories, trolling, and abuse? • Combatting polarisation: • How can mainstream society be protected from hyperpartisanship? • How can hyperpartisan extremists be deradicalised? • How can mis/disinformation be countered and neutralised? • What role can digital media literacy play, and how can its abuse be prevented?
- 43. CRICOS No.00213J Multidisciplinary Approaches • Research needs: 🔬 Developing robust measures of polarisation for these different dimensions ✊ Distinguishing polarisation on different issues, not just left vs. right 🕸 Investigating the interconnections between antagonistic groups across issues 📈 Assessing polarisation trends over time 🌏 Comparing different political and media systems • Research frameworks: 📰 Media and communication studies – theories of the public sphere and platform publics 📲 Computational communication studies – observation and analysis of news engagement 🛋 Psychological research – motivated reasoning and the mindset of hyperpartisanship 🗳 Political science – threats and benefits of polarisation in political debates 👴 Historical studies – longer-term trajectories and historical parallels
- 45. CRICOS No.00213J Inputs to this were supported by the ARC Laureate Fellowship project Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate, ARC Future Fellowship project Understanding Intermedia Information Flows in the Australian Online Public Sphere, the ARC LIEF project TrISMA: Tracking Infrastructure for Social Media Analysis, and the ARC Discovery projects Journalism beyond the Crisis: Emerging Forms, Practices, and Uses and Evaluating the Challenge of 'Fake News' and Other Malinformation. The Australian Search Experience project is supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S). Facebook data are provided courtesy of CrowdTangle. Acknowledgments