Broadcast media are declining in their power to decide which issues and viewpoints will reach large audiences. But new information filters are appearing, in the guise of recommender systems, aggregators, search engines, feed ranking algorithms, and the sites we bookmark and the people and organizations we choose to follow on Twitter. Sometimes we explicitly choose our filters; some we hardly even notice. Critics worry that, collectively, these filters will isolate people in information bubbles only partly of their own choosing, and that the inaccurate beliefs they form as a result may be difficult to correct. But should we really be worried, and, if so, what can we do about it? Our panelists will review what scholars know about selectivity of exposure preferences and actual exposure and what we in the CSCW field can do to develop and test ways of promoting diverse exposure, openness to the diversity we actually encounter, and deliberative discussion.
Strategies for Unlocking Knowledge Management in Microsoft 365 in the Copilot...
CSCW2013 Bursting your (filter) bubble
1. BURSTING YOUR
(FILTER) BUBBLE
Learning from Selective Exposure
R. Kelly Garrett | Asst. Professor | OSU School of
Communication
CSCW ’13, San Antonio, TX
February 25, 2013
2. SELECTIVE EXPOSURE
Political attitudes influence what information people
consume (Lazarsfeld, et al., 1948; Frey, 1986)
Selective approach, selective avoidance (Garrett,
2009)
Not echo chambers (Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2011; Webster &
Ksiazek , 2012, Garrett et al., 2013)
Context matters
Effective design can capitalize on what we’ve
learned garrett.258@osu.edu 2
4. CONTENT CUES
Two experiments with similar design
One using source cues (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009)
Other using content cues (Garrett & Stroud,
2012)
Strikingly different results
Conservatives preferred Fox and avoided
CNN & NPR; Liberals the reverse
Neither conservatives nor liberals consistently
avoided counter-attitudinal
Lesson: Content cues may help overcome
some expressions of bias
4garrett.258@osu.edu
5. PARTY AFFILIATION
Republicans avoid predominantly
counter-attitudinal content
Democrats seek high levels of
pro-attitudinal content
Both groups entertain diverse viewpoints
Lesson: Different mixes of content may appeal
depending on the consumer’s political identity
5garrett.258@osu.edu
Avoid this… But not this.
And this.Seek this…
6. MOTIVATED REASONING & GOALS
News consumers’ information seeking varies
depending on their goals (Carnahan, 2013)
Accuracy
Directional
Closure
For example, individuals who expect to publicly
justify their position to experts are more balanced
consumers
Lesson: If you can prime accuracy goals, you can
make diverse exposure more palatable
6garrett.258@osu.edu
7. EMOTIONS
Anxiety (Valentino et al., 2009; Carnahan et al., 2011)
Individuals seek out diverse viewpoints when that
information helps them alleviate the threat
Anger?
We may avoid or abandon sources that make us angry
Lessons: Users’ emotional states can provide clues
to the types of content that will attract them
7garrett.258@osu.edu
8. BROADER DESIGN IMPLICATIONS
More sophisticated understanding of preferences
Don’t present users with an either/or choice
Recommend sets or streams of information
Use context
Provide counter-attitudinal content in form or context
that people find most palatable
Nudge
Prime normative expectations, benefits of counter-
attitudinal exposure (or risks of ignorance), etc.
8garrett.258@osu.edu
Editor's Notes
Kick off with a discussion of what social scientists know about how people’s political predispositions shape their exposure to political news.
This provides a foundation on which we can build new design strategies.
Not a new idea: Bacon wrote about it in the 17th c; social science research dates back to the 1940s.
Two distinct dimensions, with different causes and effects
Generally speaking, people don’t have an aversion to news sources that present multiple viewpoints. They do, however, like to be reassured that their viewpoint has merit. How individuals achieve this varies, but it rarely mean shunning counter-attitudinal content.
Exposure decisions are highly contextual, depending on both the news consumer’s demographic traits and his or her state of mind. Understanding this, designers can think about crafting systems that promote diverse exposure by accounting for these differences.
If we build systems that confound selective approach and selective avoidance, echo chambers are what we’ll get (e.g., http://www.bing.com/politics/news?filter=all)
Results from front page on 2/25
We can do better
Content cues: Individuals tend to use source as a heuristic for the partisan bias of a source (e.g., Fox is conservative, MSNBC is liberal), which has amplify aversion to these sources. Cues derived from content (e.g., the story contains extensive coverage of position X, less of position Y) could provide more nuance, potentially encouraging individuals to examine sources they might otherwise avoid.
Iyengar, S., & Hahn, K. S. (2009). Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use. Journal of Communication, 59, 19-39.
Garrett, R. K., & Stroud, N. J. (2012). Decoupling selective approach and selective avoidance. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the National Communication Association, Orlando, FL.
Further insight from the cue-based study described on the previous page.
Garrett, R. K., & Stroud, N. J. (2012). Decoupling selective approach and selective avoidance. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the National Communication Association, Orlando, FL.
“accuracy goals promoted the use of more sources, a greater degree of balance in the information search, and more time spent reading the stories”
Carnahan, Dustin. (2013) Why Motivations Matter: How Judgment Goals Influence Political Information-Seeking Practices and Their Implications for Deliberative Democracy. Ph.D. Dissertation in progress, Ohio State University (Political Science).
This has been shown in the lab and in the wild. For example, Republican’s likelihood of examining left-leaning sources during the ’08 election cycle increased with the prospects of an Obama victory. (“Know thy enemy”)
Valentino, N. A., Banks, A. J., Hutchings, V. L., & Davis, A. K. (2009). Selective Exposure in the Internet Age: The Interaction between Anxiety and Information Utility. Political Psychology, 30(4), 591-613.
Carnahan, D., Lynch, E., & Garrett, R. K. (2011). Who are the “opinion-challengers”? Understanding online exposure practices and the role of information utility in the 2008 U.S. Election. Paper presented at the 69th Annual Midwest Political Science Association Conference, Chicago, IL.
Schwarz, N. (2012). Feelings-as-information theory. In P. A. M. V. Lange, A. W. Kruglanski & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology: Volume One (pp. 289-308). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
E.g., prioritize quality, popularity, interestingness over partisanship or ideology.