Does our "filter bubble" narrow our learning online?

In the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century I was so excited about the potential of the Internet. I saw it as offering an endless array of information, for any interest area and as I was learning about freedom of speech during my undergraduate years, I saw the Internet as a great democratising force, a platform where anyone could share their opinion. However, after reading an article that cites The Filter Bubble, a book by Eli Pariser in 2011, I am now beginning to think whether what I anticipated has "backfired." Rather than being a democratising force it is largely "controlled through personalisation" (Pariser, (2011) as cited in Menchaca, 2012)."

   by  Ali Smiles :) 

An article by Menchaca (2012) outlines a study by librarians and publishers in the networked learning of the 21st century and outline how when students research for information they do not consider the "library resources" as students had in the past, but "overwhelmingly use social networking sites, such as Facebook (Head & Eisenberg, 2011, p.36 as cited in Menchaca, 2012). By "liking and commenting" on their friends' posts and websites, through Facebook's algorithms, and this occurs for YouTube as well, the individual encounters "more of the same," in other words, more information that already confirms or reaffirms what he or she is interested in or wants to know about. As a learner I know I am certainly doing this.

Gone are the human filters (i.e. editors and publishers), who decided what was printed, and had peers that would "call them out." A consequence of the "filter bubble" is that individuals will only seek what they like (Menchaca, 2012). We will seek out those friends whose "online behaviour mimics and reinforces our own (Menchaca, 2012). Pariser in The Filter Bubble describes how the "socially constructed information" of our "circle of association contracts tighter and tighter," to the point that we become "locked" inside a "bubble," that is "tailored" on our preferences.

This is one of the reasons why I have always thought a formal education to be necessary. When I was completing my undergraduate in Education and the Arts, where I studied History, Political Science, Sociology, English Literature and Law, I was "forced," for want of a better word, to go into realms that I had not ventured before and that I was highly unlikely to have discovered on my own. I also saw academics as having "checks" and "balances" on their writing, in contrast to how I perceived the information sharing on the web. I have since learned that the Internet has its own accountability mechanisms built in but, as George Siemens, in his talk that I wrote about a few weeks ago, outlines that although "networks are great ... they still need to be augmented with systems of control," without it, I believe, we may only learn what we like rather than what we "need to learn" (Menchaca, 2012)."

Brown and Thomas (2011), as cited in Menchaca (2012), argue that "networked digital information has altered education by keeping the information "unfinished and unfinishable." This means that in contrast to 20th-century education, where information was linearly transferred from teacher to pupil, the "new culture of learning" is where students are engaged in networked communication but are living by the "law of least effort" (Menchaca, 2012).

The consequence of this was outlined by Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist and 2002 Nobel Prize winner in economics, in his Thinking, Fast and Slow, that "humans solves new problems in a manner quite opposite to how the filter bubble operates." He outlines that studies have revealed that as humans we "gravitate" to what is easier, and the Internet, inadvertently, has enabled us to acquire information (always a hunger in us aa a species) but we will take the course that demands the least cost (Kahneman, 2011, p. 35 as cited in Menchaca, 2012), thus resulting in learning that does not effect "cognitive dissonance, surprise, or doubt," the elements nurtured by "contrariety" (research that reveals the opposite side or difference), something that I have always believed was nurtured in my undergraduate education.

New understandings like this, such as the filter bubble and the consequences of social media and more widely the Internet, impacts not only my future as a teacher and learner but the future of us all. The question that I initially posed as the title of this post is something that I will continue to seek to answer.

References:

Menchaca, F. (2012). The Future Is in Doubt: Librarians, Publishers, and Networked Learning in the 21st Century, Journal of Library Administration, 52(5), 396-410.