Are Filter Bubbles Real?

There has been much concern over the impact of partisan echo chambers and filter bubbles on contemporary public debate. Is this concern justified, or is it distracting us from more serious issues?

In Are Filter Bubbles Real? (2019), Axel Bruns argues that the influence of echo chambers and filter bubbles has been severely overstated, and results from a broader moral panic about the role of online and social media in society. Our focus on these concepts, and the widespread tendency to blame platforms and their algorithms for political disruptions, obscures a far more critical question: what are the social and political drivers that have led to the rise of populism and hyperpolarization in many established and emerging democracies, and how can we reverse this dangerous trend? Bruns evaluates the evidence for and against echo chambers and filter bubbles, and offers a persuasive argument for why we should shift our focus to more important problems.

Are Filter Bubbles Real? is important reading for students and scholars of media,communication, journalism, and politics, as well as general readers concerned about current challenges to public debate and the democratic process.

Flaws in popular conceptions of echo chambers and filter bubbles are exposed by Axel Bruns’s analytical perspective on the actual uses and impact of the Internet in politics, which raises new and even more troubling questions.’
— William H. Dutton, University of Southern California and University of Oxford

This is precisely the wake-up call we need: a book that blows up myths about “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers”, showing how misleading these concepts have become. Bruns offers smarter ways of thinking about the issues and explains the real concerns that need our attention at a critical moment for media, politics, and public life.’
— Seth C. Lewis, University of Oregon

Are Filter Bubbles Real? was published by Polity Books, Cambridge, in 2019. The book is available from Amazon and other book stores.