Lecture 10

Question 1

eco-chamber

Answer 1

an environment in which the opinion, political leaning, or belief of users about a topic gets reinforced due to repeated interactions with peers or sources having similar tendencies and attitudes

Question 2

Filter bubbles

Answer 2

Algorithmically induced echo chambers owing to the common practices of online media to recommend personalized news content

Question 3

effects of echo-chambers and filter bubbles

Answer 3

They both lead to less pluralism at the individual level (same individual in not exposed to diverse content)

Distort the way people think - for themselves and how they think others think

Reinforce beliefs, thus leading to extremism & polarisation

Question 4

Moralized content

Answer 4

ideas, objects, or events typically construed in terms of the interests or good or a unit larger than the individual

Moralized content is more engaging.

Question 5

Spiral of Silence

Answer 5

• Phenomenon where people routinely compare the position to the perceived majority, and depending on where they stand (how far away they feel they are), they hesitate or not to express themselves.
  
  • The more people hesitate to express minority opinion, the less minority opinion is expressed. Supresses the expression of opinion that is not part of majority

Question 6

pros and cons of paper can democracy survive the internet

Answer 6

○ Pros: more ideas, more bottom-up ideas, democratisation of information
○ Cons: attention economy, algorithms (short-term benefits, long-term drawbacks), algorithms (black boxes - we don’t know what they do)