On the surface, it seems like social media has the boundless potential to expand our world, connecting us to ideas and people we otherwise would never have found. However, a new study claims just the opposite: Social media actually isolates us, creating and facilitating confirmation biases and echo chambers where old — and sometimes erroneous — information is just regurgitated over and over again.
If it sounds bleak, it’s because it kind of is.
The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using data modeling, a team of researchers from Italy mapped the spread of two types of content: conspiracy theories and scientific information.
What this means for “fake news”
Alessandro Bessi, a postdoctoral researcher with the Information Science Institute at the University of Southern California, co-authored the paper. He says the point of the study was really to investigate how and why misinformation spreads online.
He says the team got interested in the phenomenon after the World Economic Forum listed massive digital misinformation as one of the main threats to modern society.
So instead of sharing to challenge or inform, social media users are more likely to share an idea already commonly accepted in their social groups for the purpose of reinforcement or agreement. This means misinformation — which is a much more appropriate term for “fake news” — can rattle around unchecked.
What can we do about it?
Even if you pride yourself on avoiding misinformation and think you’re having open, accepting conversations online, Bessi cautions that we’re all subject to confirmation bias on some level.
This can lead to reckless sharing — we sometimes share something without really examining what it is.
In the future, Bessi says, there may be programs or algorithms that can help clean up misinformation. For now, he recommends a more analog approach: Do your own fact-checking — and soul-searching — before you share.
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