Evidence, please

  • Earlier studies of the bifurcated blog world 15 years ago uncovered “only mild echo chambers.”
  • The Pew Research Center found that Facebook users do not select friends based on political leaning and thus are exposed to other worldviews in social media.
  • Two studies looked at already divisive topics — abortion, vaccination, Obamacare, gun control — and found, of course, they were also divisive online, though non-political but debatable topics — Game of Thrones and food porn — did not lead to polarization online. Is divisiveness online the cause or the effect?
  • “Social media users generally encounter a greater diversity of newssources than non-users do.”
  • “Those users frequenting the most extremely partisan conservative sites in the United States have been found also to be more likely than ordinary internet users to visit the centrist New York Times.”
  • “Exposure to highly partisan political information … does not come at the expense of contact with other viewpoints.”
  • In sum, a half-dozen academics argue, “at present there is little empirical evidence that warrants any worries about filter bubbles.”