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posted by chromas on Tuesday March 12 2019, @11:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the eople-crab-people-crab-people-crab-people-crab-people-crab-people-crab-people-crab-people-crab-peopl dept.

Submitted via IRC for FatPhil

Social media and internet not cause of political polarisation (new research suggests)

Using a random sample of adult internet users in the UK, researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute and the University of Ottawa examined people’s media choices, and how much they influenced their interaction with echo chambers, against six key variables: gender, income, ethnicity, age, breadth of media use and political interest. The findings reveal that rather than encouraging the use and development of echo chambers, the breadth of multimedia available actually makes it easier for people to avoid them.

Dr Grant Blank, co-author and research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, said: ‘Whatever the causes of political polarisation today, it is not social media or the internet.

‘If anything, most people use the internet to broaden their media horizons. We found evidence that people actively look to confirm the information that they read online, in a multitude of ways. They mainly do this by using a search engine to find offline media and validate political information. In the process they often encounter opinions that differ from their own and as a result whether they stumbled across the content passively or use their own initiative to search for answers while double checking their “facts”, some changed their own opinion on certain issues.’

[...] Dr Elizabeth Dubois, co-author and Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa, said: ‘Our results show that most people are not in a political echo chamber. The people at risk are those who depend on only a single medium for political news and who are not politically interested: about 8% of the population. However, because of their lack of political engagement, their opinions are less formative and their influence on others is likely to be comparatively small.’

The echo chamber is overstated: the moderating effect of political interest and diverse media, Elizabeth Dubois & Grant Blank in Information, Communication & Society. 2018 (DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2018.1428656)


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Wednesday March 13 2019, @04:00PM (2 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 13 2019, @04:00PM (#813776) Journal

    Bingo!

    People have always preferred to go along with the popular idea. They also want their own opinions supported. If you've got an unpopular idea, then the internet lets you find people who agree with you, so you can see your idea as popular. Notice that the accuracy of the idea was not involved in this argument. It pushes both ideas that are factual and ideas that are contrafactual.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 13 2019, @09:09PM (1 child)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday March 13 2019, @09:09PM (#813919)

    pushes both ideas that are factual and ideas that are contrafactual.

    Then we can start the meta-arguments about quality of "factual" sources...

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    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:20PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 13 2019, @10:20PM (#813953) Journal

      Irrelevant. It pushes both. It pushes the West Virginia Mothman, it pushes election in 2020, it pushes Mothra, it doesn't care, it's just a facilitator, that facilitates ALL weird ideas, and many that aren't weird.

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      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.