In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, we’ve all pretty much accepted the idea that we confine ourselves to news bubbles. We wrap ourselves in a warm blanket of news that reinforces our beliefs and opinions back to us. Also, in light of the recent fake news phenomenon, it’s important to evaluate the ways in which we get our information online. We may be exposed to over 100 messages every day, but only notice a handful of them. Imagine scrolling through your Facebook timeline, what influences whether or not you read an article? What makes you scroll past a headline?
Selective exposure is a theory within mass communication that basically says people will expose themselves to information that aligns with their beliefs or values and will tend to avoid contradictory information. We probably don’t recognize when selective exposure comes into play while we’re catching up on social media but it does affect what content you decide to pay attention to and what you decide to ignore. This makes sense! As humans we generally don’t like to have opposing thoughts. These deep-rooted emotions play a big part in what people see on the internet and, although it’s not necessarily good or bad, we need to recognize it. This can affect how we select which media outlets to read and believe, or which ones to discredit.
At the outset, the Internet was expected to be an open, democratic source of information. By making so much information so accessible, social media has drastically changed the way we consume information and form opinions in the modern era. It has significantly changed news consumption by providing us with an enormous amount of choices when it comes to content sources. There is so much content online and it seems impossible to sort through it all, forcing us to be more selective than ever. The same story can be written ten different ways by all types of news outlets, and which article we choose to read depends on our beliefs. Selective exposure is really important when it comes to politics. Whether you are politically right-sided, left-sided, or not sided at all, this affects what you click on and how you interpret it. Algorithms like the kind used by Facebook, often steer us toward articles that reflect our own ideological preferences, and search results usually echo what we already know and like. It reinforces the beliefs of users because they tend to seek out news and views that tally with their own opinions. The social networking site creates an "echo chamber" or “a kind of cognitive inoculation” in which a network of like-minded people share controversial theories, biased views and selective news, academics found. It filters the information people receive so that it largely supports their existing opinions. This means that any bias held is simply repeated back to them unchallenged and accepted as fact. Facebook users typically interact with a small number of news outlets. Users tend to confine their activity to a limited set of pages. These behaviors allow news consumption on Facebook to be dominated by selective exposure, meaning that people are most often exposed to news sources that reinforce their existing opinions. In terms of this behavior, Facebook users’ interactions with news sources largely depend on their online communities. This is where users tend to gather based on common beliefs and interests. This applies to all of the content we see online, on television, and in newspapers/magazines.
Facebook has also been heavily criticized for creating a political echo chamber, where people tend to find information and engage with those who reinforce their views rather than challenge them. Considering today’s political landscape, where most of the American adults get news on social media, and where Facebook likes and shares are the language of debate for voters, isn’t it more crucial than ever that voters carefully evaluate all the information presented to them, rather than just reflections of their own beliefs? For example, Donald Trump supporters are more likely to scroll past an article with a headline that speaks negatively of him but will read the article or engage in a conversation online that speaks about the positives. These articles may or may not have a credible source. But readers’ will still read them because it aligns with their belief. Facebook released its own study last year that showed its users have five friends with political views similar to their own for every one friend with opposing views.
Now, the tendency to promote one’s favored narrative is natural, but too much confirmation distances us from other perspectives and makes us unable to see the truth when it’s finally presented. In the end, a constant us-vs.-them mentality depersonalizes the holders of alternative views.
But nowadays, Google and Facebook are trying automated solutions to prevent the spread of fake news via social media. However, coming up with good solutions is challenging, because the larger underlying problem is that social media allows users to self-segregate. Existing social-media algorithms feed users news sources that they have previously shown interest in. Over time, this narrows the news sources of Facebook users and tends to expose them to information that reinforces their own perspectives. So they become increasingly polarized.
There is content online that will fit each person’s unique beliefs and unfortunately, a lot of news programs have become strongly opinionated, further pushing selective exposure. So we have to make a choice, do you read FoxNews or Msnbc’s take on Donald Trump’s latest executive order? We have to be careful that we don’t only pay attention to sources that are biased and one-sided because if we’re not, our newsfeed could become flooded with news promoting one side over the other even if it means twisting the information and we could miss out on the truth.
Since we’ve become so attached to social media, we are less and less required to interact with people who disagree with us. Technology allows us to reach across state lines (and even oceans) to find people who share our beliefs and values. Until social media designers can address the fact that these platforms allow the increasing polarization of users into small, tight-knit communities, stopping the proliferation of misinformation will continue to be a challenge.
In the end it just makes me wonder: Are we ignoring credibility to avoid cognitive dissonance?
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