The Echo Chamber: John Boyne

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Kaiser, J., & Rauchfleisch, A. (2020). Birds of a feather get recommended together: Algorithmic homophily in YouTube’s channel recommendations in the United States and Germany. Social Media + Society, 6(4).

Bail, C. A., Argyle, L. P., Brown, T. W., Bumpus, J. P., Chen, H., Fallin Hunzaker, M. B., Lee, J., Mann, M., Merhout, F., & Volfovsky, A. (2018). Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(37), 9216–9221.Polarisation, in social science, refers to divisions between groups. It can be used to describe a situation where divisions are already sufficiently large to be considered polarised, or a process whereby divisions are becoming larger over time (even though they may still be quite small). Polarisation can take many forms and is not always intrinsically problematic (some things are worth disagreeing over, see Kreiss 2019). In this literature review we examine, specifically, social science work presenting evidence concerning the existence, causes, and effect of online echo chambers and consider what related research can tell us about scientific discussions online and how they might shape public understanding of science and the role of science in society. The term filter bubble was coined by the activist and entrepreneur Eli Pariser in his book of the same name, to capture his concern that the increasing use of personalisation in the ranking of search engine results and social media feeds would create “a unique universe of information for each of us” (2011, p. 10) eroding the possibility of a relatively shared common ground – as we might be shown more and more of things we like, while things we are not prone to like are hidden from us – on the basis of data-driven display decisions dictated by platform companies’ commercial interests rather than our own active choices.

Kim, M., & Lu, Y. (2020). Testing partisan selective exposure in a multidimensional choice context: Evidence from a conjoint experiment. Mass Communication and Society, 23(1), 107–127. It’s the concept of “failing” that feels so poignant. His experiences at school, combined with the fact that homosexuality wasn’t decriminalised until Boyne was in his third year of university and that, by that time, the Aids crisis was in full spate, feel like so much to contend with that self-reproach is simply too cruel. In other parts of his life, after all, Boyne seems like a measure of success: not only in career terms, but in his closeness to family and friends and in his enjoyment of his daily life. “I’m not spending all my day crying about it,” he reassures me. “I work hard. And I like my life a lot. And maybe you just can’t have everything.” Webster, J. G. (2014). The marketplace of attention: How audiences take shape in a digital age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Scheufele, D. A., & Krause, N. M. (2019). Science audiences, misinformation, and fake news. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(16), 7662.

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That said, there are growing concerns about selective exposure in scientific domains that have become politically aligned, emotionally loaded, and more explicitly and actively politically polarised in some countries (e.g., Nisbet et al. 2015). Evie's need to register many voices also brings forth a diary extract from her mother that neatly conveys the meeting of domestic and political tensions in the final days of British rule, as well as offering more fine descriptions, such as the onset of the harmattan-induced sand-storm. Williams's well-balanced, rhythmic sentences are perfect here for sketching variations in darkness and light. How self-selection driven by forms of opinion other than political ones operate and how self-selection based on partisanship and/or interest shapes engagement with news and information around science.