Public Perceptions of Filter Bubble Concerns

The final speaker in our ICA 2018 panel is Neil Thurman. He notes that beyond the platform studies we must also look at the intersections between different social networks and platforms, and at the broader societal debate about echo chambers and filter bubbles. His work builds on the 2016 Reuters Institute Digital News Survey (covering 26 countries), and explores how aware and concerned users are of and about the algorithmic and editorial selection of the news content they engage with.

Some 57% of respondents are worried about missing out on challenging viewpoints and important information as a result of such interventions, yet at the same time they also appreciated this work as a way to winnow down the full feed of information to the items they are most likely to be interested in; algorithmic and editorial selection is preferred here to peer recommendations, interestingly.

These views are also affected by a number of contextual factors: for example, older users express less concern about these issues (which may be because they remain more reliant on older, offline media); heavier social and mobile media users express more concern (perhaps because they experience algorithmic selection and personalisation options more directly).