WHY ARE WE MISSING THE BIGGER PICTURE OF JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING?

WHY ARE WE MISSING THE BIGGER PICTURE OF JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING?
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

The Internet promised to open us up to the world, enable access to infinite amounts of knowledge and connect us with anyone on Earth. It promised to expand our horizons, yet something quite different is taking place.

There are many people in America who simply can’t understand how Trump got this far and why would anyone support him. There are at least that many people who look at Clinton and simply can’t understand her follower’s rationale. Across the pond, Europeans are divided on the question of immigration, and it’s not a subtle debate. “You’re either with us, or through your lack common sense, you are destroying the world as we know it.”

We have become more extreme and less tolerant and that is because of how the internet is structured.

Take social media, where we get a big chunk of our view of the world. (Sixty percent of Millennials get their news about politics from Facebook, according to 2014 Pew research). On social media, you are exposed to people who are most like you, with the same views and knowledge you already possess. Whatever your opinion is, it is being justified, over and over again online. It feels like EVERYONE agrees with you.

Accept for those who don’t, only they are less likely to pop up in your feed.

In a presentation about the filter bubble effect (i.e., what you get when search algorithms are making choices on what information to present to you), Eli Praiser showed how Google search results differ from person to person on the same query. He showed how a search for “Egypt” brings up touristic destination for one person and the Arab Spring for another. This was demonstrated in 2011 when Google had only 50 personalization filters per user. Now that we’re in 2016, there are more than 200 “unique clues” that Google uses to filter results and so much more data to amplify that personalized approach.

Choices have to be made. The information revolution brought about unfathomable amounts of information that, without screening, would simply be overwhelming. However, the gateways to the information are commercial entities, and their choices are aimed at maximizing profit. I don’t criticize them for being what they are, but there is a price to pay as a society. We have lost our perspective.

Our skewed view of the world is worsened by an increasingly fragmented media world. Journalism had a hard time coping with media consumption going digital. Journalists’ livelihoods in this new era pend on their ability to attract and retain exposure that is always a second away from going elsewhere. They positioned themselves as better to attract specific demographics and, as a result, got highly fragmented. If you get your news from Fox News, The NY Times, the Guardian or Daily Mail, etc., you know what general view of the world you’re getting even before reading one word.

There is an echoing system in place. One that reverberates some issues until they feel like our existence depends on them. It also constantly justifies your view on a specific issue. We live in Virtual Echo Boxes (VEB), which gets us in lightning speed to an extremity at which we can’t sustain contradicting views.

President Obama referred to it in a VOX Interview from Feb 2015 saying that “the balkanization of media [means] we don’t have a common place from where to get common facts of common world views the way we did twenty, thirty years ago, and that just keeps on accelerating.”

I live in Israel. A country that exists at a center of debate, from within, even more so than from afar. My political side of the map lost the last election. It didn’t just feel like we lost the election– it felt like we lost the country (though it was a small marginal win for the opposing side). It also feels like we don’t know who our fellow citizens are and that we don’t share our most basic values with them. After the election, we felt betrayed. We wanted to distance ourselves from those who think differently because we see their thinking as dangerous. I’m certain they feel the same way.

The inflamed discussion on social networks and the “fear and loathing” political rhetoric is getting worse. Just look at Trump, immigration, gun control and even ISIS with its online marketing. I think we are all under the influence, and it’s a much bigger and immediate threat to our society than most conceived threats. Only we are missing it.

What shall we do? The first thing is to recognize we live in Virtual Echo Boxes and are subjected to their effects. Only when we recognize this, can we start finding ways to get out.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot