MIND OVER MATTER: THE ECHO CHAMBER ISN'T EVEN THE REAL PROBLEM!
MIND OVER MATTER: THE ECHO CHAMBER ISN'T EVEN THE REAL PROBLEM!
Thanks to the information age, we now live in an algorithm-fuelled world. That has its problems, no doubt, but in and of itself, it doesn't actually tear us apart…
Read Time: 6 Minutes
We’ve all heard of echo chambers. As a result of algorithms that monitor our internet and social media usage, a slew of content that appeals directly to our beliefs and pre-conceived notions tends to be selectively curated and put before us. All designed to drive more and more engagement on our part, ultimately making tech companies a lot of money.
One consequence is that we can quite easily be left with the very mistaken impression that our views are more common or accepted than they actually are. We only hear from people we agree with, only get straw-man versions of alternative viewpoints, and can end up left with the illusion of a false consensus. It’s immensely problematic, to be sure, chiefly because it often goes hand-in-hand with othering language that has led to making things very tribal and toxic online. But, there’s growing evidence to suggest it might not be as pervasive as we may think.
A quaint visualisation of an echo chamber, where everything encountered is a comforting green or blue amidst the rainbow of life. (Source: ‘Wikipedia’)
Rewind the clock a few decades, and the major communities we were a part of were almost exclusively geographical. In fact, for eons, that’s the way it’s been throughout our evolutionary history. Well it turns out, there's actually a great deal of utility in that.
Take a typical Australian public school, for instance. Australia can be a pretty multicultural place in many parts, so an average school will feature students from a number of diverse ethnicities and religious denominations. There might be some differences among them, sure. But they all still wear the same school uniform, can all gripe together about how much homework they get, and all pool their efforts when it’s time to challenge another a school to a sporting match or debate. The differences are there, but a lot of common interests are also there to counteract them. That gives the school some cohesion no matter what it might face.
It goes further too. Students from a number of different schools in a region will often meet and befriend each other during outside activities, like when playing for the local soccer club. They’re unified by a desire to beat other clubs, improve their skills, and what have you.
And so it goes, with commonalities that unite groups that are tethered to the physical world in this way. It can all culminate with things like the Olympic Games, where an entire nation of people can wear the same colours and cheer as their nation challenges another for a medal.
It reminds me of an old Arabic saying. Roughly translated, it’s:-
“Me against my brothers. My brothers and me against my cousins. My brothers and my cousins and me against the whole world.”
That right there captures the crux of what I’m talking about. We’re social animals, and for the longest time there's been a pathway for makeshift alliances as the scale of the difference or conflict grows. We evolved that way, and in many respects, are hardwired to be that way.
But as adults in particular, more and more of our communities are moving online. That means people can end up having fewer and fewer things actually binding them together, which results in a degree of fragility, and makes the reason for that community’s whole existence very one-dimensional.
Pick any social issue you like. For the sake of argument, let’s just go with feminism. You can start an online group of advocates for the feminist movement, and will invariably get members jumping onboard from all over the world. They won’t all wear the same uniform, or cheer for the same Olympic team—they won’t even all be female. So what else is there? Well, that’s just it, nothing. They’re all human beings, and they’re all feminists, that’s literally it.
With that in mind, is it any wonder that online discourse can be so toxic? Even attempting to question an aspect of feminism in good faith, by a member of the group itself, can—to those that are only brought together by their belief in the cause—be perceived as an outright attack on the sole thing their online community is unified by. It’s a swipe at their very identity, making it extremely personal. So of course some of them lash out!
This tribalism isn’t the result of an echo chamber, it's the result of having little to no common ground with anyone you encounter on the opposing side of an issue you're passionate about. The whole thing becomes dichotomous: us versus them, over one single issue that’s quintessential to the identity of both sides in completely juxtaposed ways. Talk about a recipe for disaster.
I think this is why we’re all seeing so much vitriol and sensationalism in the online world today. The very fabric of many of our communal structures has changed, and not for the better. People are failing to see those that sit on the opposite side of an issue as being someone they can relate to on even the most basic level. And when you amplify that problem with online platforms where tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people are expected to interact, well, you get exactly what we have today.
So how do we fix this? Because I think the genie is out of the bottle now. It's unrealistic to expect people to just stop caring about issues and making them a prominent feature of who they see themselves as. Just as it’s unrealistic to expect people to reverse track and go offline.
Well, as with just about anything, the very first steps are awareness and acknowledgement. Knowledge is power, so, if you know about this phenomenon, then you're obviously in an empowered position that allows you to identify it and hopefully act in a responsible way hereafter.
Beyond that, however, I must admit that I’m at a loss. I can’t help but wonder if amalgamating certain online communities into broader ones would help. Say, an online group for atheist feminist mothers, instead of just for feminists. That way, internal discourse doesn’t hinge on everyone’s total agreement on a single issue, and any external discourse has a higher chance of being with someone in agreement at least somewhere on the spectrum.
But this is a fairly new problem. We’ve all been so enamoured by these tools at our disposal, that we kind of strayed into the headlights a little. Hopefully we can figure it out, because if things keep tracking the way they are, we might be in a bit of trouble soon…