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Avoiding the Echo Chamber About Echo Chambers – Trust, Media and Democracy | Medium

With critics decrying the “echo chambers,” “filter bubbles,” and “information cocoons” created by the rise of online news and social media, you’d think that the entire American public was consuming a near-exclusive diet of politically pleasing news.

Voters do increasingly face an information glut that requires them to make choices about what news to consume. In these polarized times, it may therefore seem intuitive that people will overwhelmingly select into or be directed toward media and information flows that confirm their pre-existing biases, further reinforcing those views.

A deep dive into the academic literature tells us that the “echo chambers” narrative captures, at most, the experience of a minority of the public. Indeed, this claim itself has ironically been amplified and distorted in a kind of echo chamber effect.

Source: Avoiding the echo chamber about echo chambers – Trust, Media and Democracy – Medium