SP

    Throughout the course of my classes, I have found that a lot of communication classes have much to do with social media. This has brought up the conversation of a filter bubble. The “filter bubble” is a way of explaining the personalization of the internet. It explains reasons why certain advertisements come up on your Facebook feed, or why certain websites pop up higher on your google search. With all of the information that has been created on the internet, there is no way that our brains will be able to process it all. Having a “filter bubble” is supposed to help us sort throughout all of the unwanted information and just give us the information that is relevant and important to a single person. So how important really is the filter bubble? Does it effect us as much as people say? 

  

I first was introduced to the filter bubble in one of my special topics in mass communication class. We talked about how the filter bubble may have effected the the 2016 election. I believe that a filter bubble can be created by both the person themselves, as long as the platform of media that they choose to use. Many people became upset over the election, on both sides, and therefore they began to create their own filter bubble. By “un-friending” people, they only got to see sources from one side of the political party, therefore losing insight from the other side. Granted, they still may not agree with what the other political party was saying, but it is important to be able to understand where the other side is coming from. This creates a digitally one sided world, where people can be caught up in believing the world is one way when in reality it could be completely different. In this light, you are able to see how people can create their own filter bubble without the help of social media websites. 

 

On top of creating their own filter bubble, social media websites can also be a factor in filtering information to be almost too personalized. I learned about this part of the filter bubble in my Media Criticism class. Here we learned about Pariser, the actual definition of the “filter bubble” and how it could effect our everyday lives without us even knowing. Although the websites make it very convent to see what you find as important. It also leaves a gap in information that people may not be able to see. According to Pariser, once the social media websites have the algorithms going, they are relatively cheap to keep running. This means that many websites are using these “filter bubbles” that you wouldn't even expect. For example, a person who has never heard of the filter bubble would be surprised to know how much Google knows about you. Since it has access to personal information like emails, what you have searched, how long you have been lingering on a specific website, it knows way more than you think. 

 

In my opinion, now more than ever people need to be given an insight on how other people feel and how they think. The more each of us is “filtered” the less we are able to experience how other people may view things differently than us. Especially in a world where just like you can google information to, you can also create information. Bill Gates said, “we have a system that when people want to find things, it’s easier than ever. If they want to publish things, it’s easier than ever.” This means that for every accurate news article, there is an inaccurate news article. And with the “filter bubble”, it is easy to get caught up in information that may not be true. I think that the “filter bubble” is very important because in a world of so much information it would be way too hard to filter all of it ourselves. In that same breath, I think that is important to make it common knowledge that no everything you read is true. By educating and making this more well known, it will help to slowly solve the shock of the “filter bubble”. It would not surprise me that many people would have never heard of the “filter bubble” because before last year I hadn’t. 

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_big_idea/2011/06/bubble_trouble.html

https://www.brainpickings.org/2011/05/12/the-filter-bubble/

https://qz.com/913114/bill-gates-says-filter-bubbles-are-a-serious-problem-with-news/

Pariser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. Penguin Books,         2012.