Imagine this; you are a local politician and you are invited to a conference to discuss the gun laws in the state of Texas. You believe that gun laws should be stricter, and you are here to discuss your legislation plans. The event is mostly right-leaning as most politicians going to the event are as well, and the overall opinion is to actually loosen laws around guns. When you write down a form to get tickets, they deny your entry because of your political views. You go and talk to other party members left and right, and realize anyone who agrees with you -and therefore against the other- is denied access. The environment created inside the event is what we call an echo chamber.
An echo chamber is an environment in which thoughts and opinions are killed off before new ones can form because of circulating ideas. Through this process, ideas cannot evolve or grow. This means that the central point rarely branches off and ideas go stagnant; effectively “beating a dead horse. Without thinking about it, we use cognitive bias to make decisions. Cognitive bias is the predetermined ideas and beliefs that we hold, influencing the decisions made about anything we do or think about. An echo chamber allows cognitive bias to happen unchecked, and people will then make irrational decisions because there is no other voice to think about possible other options.
Technology has changed the way that echo chambers exist. Before the likes of Instagram, Facebook, and even MySpace and AOL, boardrooms and businesses could be run with an ‘echo chamber’ like mentality focused solely on themselves and money. Now, technology can have these opinions and their influence spread throughout the internet, reaching many more people. Youtube, for example, wants only certain content to be pushed, and anything they disagree with or something they do not want to be discussed on their platform will be removed. Through catered algorithms, they can cancel out opinions they dislike. This ends up with a platform that ‘supports’ ideas and creativity, but only pushes a certain type. They will also purposely push ideas based on views and likes, which helps, but then ignores their rules when certain news articles or Late night show clips are made. Even news cites have been retrofitted into this narrative.
A great example of an echo chamber online is the one and only Flat Earth Society Twitter account (@FlatEarthOrg). They believe that the earth is actually a flat plane, with a spherical sun and moon orbiting the top creating night and day. This also means that every space organization, government and flight-based and sea-based companies are lying about the “real world”. They are an echo chamber, as whenever someone disagrees, they tend to block, delete, ignore, or bombard with facts and claim victors. There will never be a scenario where someone in the community will admit defeat because that breaks the seal on the echo chamber. You cannot argue a round earth to someone who does not agree in gravity, and shuts you out when you bring anything opposing to the table.
No comments:
Post a Comment