I’d rather be a polar bear than polarized.
Peas in a Pod…Homophily!

Social media is a great way to find people similar to you in many different ways, be it similar interests, backgrounds, opinions, political stances, etc. This is why it has been said that social media contributes to homophily. Homophily is the tendency for people to gravitate towards people who are similar to them. We love to surround ourselves with people who are like us, who think and see like us; two peas in a pod. Sometimes it’s just easier that way. There are a lot of benefits to homophily in social media, some of which are the ability to connect with people and groups that you may not have in your offline life, such as support groups or communities, subcultures, and the like. I won’t like, I thoroughly enjoy being able to surround myself on social media networks with likeminded people. As I’ve mentioned probably a hundred times, I am a giant book nerd, and while a lot of my friends love to read, we have different tastes in genres, so I find groups and online communities who have similar tastes in book genres, or I find communities where I can talk about my obsession with the band twentyonepilots. Those are just superficial communities though. There are support groups for individuals with suicidal ideation, traumatic experiences, abuse, mental illnesses, and so forth. You can literally find likeminded people for just about everything. The internet is vast, and there are endless possibilities for us to engage in homophily. Anyway, I know we totally covered this already last week, but I just wanted to refresh your memory a bit. If you didn’t happen to read the post about homophily and social media, you can do so here. Now we’ll move on to the new stuff.
Algorithms, cognitive biases, oh my!
Also mentioned in my last blog post were the algorithms that social media networks use to promote homophily. There are so many benefits to homophily, but there are some drawbacks that should be mentioned so that we’re aware of the negative consequences. When we engage solely with people who are likeminded, we can become isolated in our viewpoints and beliefs. You might notice that your social media news feeds are full of political content, and most of it is in agreement with your own political stance. Because of the algorithms in social media, especially Facebook, that were created to further homophily, it can create a sort of cage that only shows us content that is congruent with our beliefs and will automatically weed out information that does not match our consumption data, effectively disallowing us from viewing content that could expand our knowledge and furthering our chances of polarization. Polarization is basically that we become stuck and extreme in our own beliefs. I’ll give an example. I have a particular friend on Facebook who is so polarized in his social media, that if he encounters anything at all that goes against his beliefs and opinions, he will viciously lash out at these individuals with differing opinions, and go so far as to delete and block them. This friend has been a friend of my family for over two decades, and his extreme liberal beliefs brought him to lash out at my dad and block him from Facebook, all because my dad posted something that was slightly conservative. This is a common example of polarization, as those who become isolated in their little cages of homogeneous content become increasingly intolerant of differing opinions or information. Spohr (2017) wrote that social media has had a drastic effect on ideological polarization, and that this is becoming more and more apparent (p. 150). This could be linked with the research that showed that 62% of adults in the US use social media for news consumption (Spohr, 2017).

While algorithms have been posited as a reason for polarization in social media because they filter through content and supply only what the algorithm determines relevant, they are not the only theory being touted (Spohr, 2017). Another viable theory is that we are engaging in selective exposure behavior, confirmation bias, and availability bias (Spohr, 2017). In simple terms, we are more likely to interact with content and information that is in line with our current beliefs and views and place this information above all else. Confirmation bias is when we take information and use it to confirm what we already believe. Availability bias happens when we are exposed to what is available, such as when we don’t search for information and only consume it when it is available in our news feeds. We only have the information that was available to us, and we do not seek to prove its validity or otherwise. And selective exposure behavior is basically what it sounds like, we selectively choose what we expose ourselves to, like conservatives only consuming information from Fox News or other outwardly conservative news sources, or liberals with CNN and the like. I hope you’ll understand without much explanation why polarization is dangerous for our democratic societies. I want to quote this directly from Spohr (2016) as he says the “most relevant consequence of polarization is a loss of diversity of opinions and arguments” (p. 151). One of the great things about the US is that we are a democratic society and we have a say in who governs us and the direction of our society through voting. While politics and religions have always been a hot and controversial subject, it used to be one that could be discussed with respect to each individual regardless of their political or religious beliefs. Polarization in social media has caused us to become intolerant of differing opinions, and we seek homogeneity instead of accepting and embracing diverse opinions, and we shut down debates and turn them into heated arguments. My news feeds are full of this. Facebook’s algorithms provide me with more liberal content (since that is what I lean more towards), but many of my family and friends are conservative. Even my own brother and I have shown the effects of polarization and had very heated arguments about politics to the point where we had to take a break from each other and make a pact that we would simply ignore each other’s posts that we didn’t agree with!! This is the danger of polarization, and why homophily and homogeneity should not be our main goal, but we should strive to consume differing information and encourage the consumption of diversity in all aspects in our own lives. Social media was meant to bring us together, but it has had a negative side effect of dividing us as well.
Steps to Prevent Being Stuck in a Rut
I’m going to start with a way to avoid engaging in arguments that can ruin relationships, which is NOT unfriending people, but instead hiding their posts from your newsfeed until political seasons have calmed down, or simply scrolling past content that bothers you. While this does not prevent the chances of polarization because you’re still hiding content that you disagree with, but this is just a simple way to save some friendships and relationships that you don’t want to lose because of political or religious differences! I think that one way to prevent yourself from becoming stuck in the polarization rut, is to allow yourself to read through information that you disagree with for the sake of becoming educated in both sides of the political debate, and remembering that those who differ from you in opinion are not conservatives, liberals, or independents, but they are people, friends, family, and to show empathy and respect towards them. Agree to disagree. Put your relationships above your political beliefs. I think everyone forgets to take a step back and see the people behind the opinion. We are a country that is divided by politics and homogeneity, whereas in previous decades we were heterogeneous and diverse, and we understood the importance of accepting that people have different beliefs and opinions than us. We’ve become such extremists in politics that we’ve lost our empathy and humanity towards others. Let’s be friends again! If I have to be polar-anything, I’d much rather be an enlightened polar bear… just saying. Sorry for the pun… the image was too cute to pass up!.

References
Spohr, D. (2017). Fake news and ideological polarization: Filter bubbles and selective exposure on social media. Business Information Review, 34(3), 150–160. doi:10.1177/0266382117722446