‘Why are all my Facebook-friends liberals?’
A young-person’s guide to bursting your online filter bubble before the 2017 General Election.
As a left-leaning person myself, I have always felt slightly trapped in a bubble of liberal/left/progressive thought. Being a part of the so-called ‘millennial generation’, it would be fair to say the majority of my friends my age (barring a few) share similar political views. This became particularly evident in the build up to the 2016 US presidential election when my Facebook newsfeed became inundated with Trump satire and anti-Republican posts.
Now, by no means is this engagement a bad thing. I strongly believe in the necessity of online political participation — particularly as a member of the age cohort with one of the lowest voter turnouts in the UK. However, as a millennial, I feel increasingly surrounded by people with the same political opinions as me. It was reported recently that 61% of millennials relied on Facebook as their primary source of news and this is not a good thing. Increasingly, my online newsfeed acts as an echo chamber to my own thoughts — if an article published by a source such as Breitbart pops up, my initial reaction (after a feeling of disgust) is usually one of surprise.
In fact, this concept is not new. Eli Pariser, for example, coined the phrase online ‘filter bubbles’ to describe a similar pattern. Pariser illustrated the way in which internet-search engines filter our searches to suit our ‘preferences’. Using complex algorithms, search engines such as Google and social media sites including Twitter and Facebook show us results based on sites we have viewed and liked before- not necessarily the most relevant search results.
Crucially, this can significantly change our online experience. Pariser, for instance, described how his politically ‘progressive’ leanings caused ‘conservative’ views to disappear completely from his Facebook newsfeed.
Now you may be asking: why is this important? Why do we need to consider alternative political opinions? Here, the answer lies in understanding the mechanics of democracy.
Dating back to the ancient Greeks, political philosophers have stressed the need for civil society to debate and challenge political ideas. The EU referendum, for instance, whilst littered with ghastly anti-immigrant rhetoric, in some instances demonstrated the ‘highest point’ of democracy — broadcasters such as the BBC strived to provide a wealth of free information for both sides of the ballot paper.
In my opinion, a key element of political participation is testing one’s views against others. Personally, I attempt to do this by reading news from as broad a range of sources as I possibly can- the Guardian, BBC News and the Times tend to be some of my typical sources as well as think-tank reports and political satire.
In the build up to the 2017 General Election, this process is crucial. However, filter bubbles make the job a whole lot harder. In 2015, the journal Science released an in-depth study on the impact of Facebook on our ‘exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinions’. Using a sample of 10.1 million Facebook users, Science concluded on average only 29% of a person’s newsfeed contained ‘contrary opinions’ or ‘cross-cutting’ articles. Whilst this figure may not seem that low, online filter bubbles can significantly warp our perspective on certain political issues.
For example, in the recent EU referendum, UK millennials overwhelmingly supported the ‘Remain’ campaign and showed this by liking, sharing and retweeting ‘anti-Brexit’ articles, posts and opinions. For many young people (myself included), Facebook largely displayed material sympathetic to the ‘Remain’ campaign thus creating a bubble of liberal, pro-EU thought. In this case and many others, filter bubbles can make it seem as if all your Facebook friends are liberals. In doing so, Facebook prevents users from engaging with the other point of view.
In many ways, I strongly believe the left has fallen victim to this problem. Two years ago, Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz used the term ‘regressive left’ to describe the ongoing reluctance of left-wing supporters to engage in extreme ‘contrary opinions’ saying that they instead chose to label these views as ‘hate-speech’. Whilst this article is focusing on more moderate ‘contrary opinions’, Harris and Nawaz are right to suggest there are groups within the left that are becoming less engaged in ‘cross-cutting’ views — a process helped in no way by filter bubbles. With movements such as Momentum perpetually growing on social media outlets, I fear the mass creation of cosy, online safe-spaces and its symbiosis with the growth of the ‘regressive left’.
To show the problems of online filter bubbles, I decided to conduct a small experiment of my own. Here, I got a range of people to google ‘Jeremy Corbyn trident’ and send me a screenshot of the results. The outcomes were striking.
The first image, shown above, shows the results of a friend, aged 21, who sees themselves as ‘left-leaning’. Unsurprisingly, Google presented them with primarily Guardian articles. Out of Google’s ‘top stories’, the headlines were perhaps less sensationalist than other popular articles published that day. For example, ‘Fallon brands Corbyn “security risk” on Trident and drone strikes’ is perhaps more of an objective statement in comparison to the articles to follow.
In contrast, the search below was conducted by a friend (aged 21) who identifies as being ‘centre-right’. Here, Google’s ‘top stories’ presented two articles with very different views to the previous search. The Telegraph, for example, described Corbyn’s position on Trident as making him ‘too weak to lead Labour’ whilst the comical Daily Express article believed the abandonment of Britain’s nuclear programme would invite ‘despot Kim Jong-un to annihilate [the] UK’.
In this experiment, it quickly became clear that Google does indeed tailor our ‘top stories’ to suit our political leanings — a process that is extremely damaging.
For example, take a member of Momentum. If this person were to only use the internet as a source of news it would be theoretically possible to never encounter an article emphasizing Corbyn’s shortcomings. Whether one supports his position on Trident or not, it is integral to the democratic process to see the other point of view — something the left is increasingly bad at doing.
With a general election approaching on 8th June, I urge everyone to try and burst your own filter bubbles. This can be done in two main ways. Firstly, you can change your computer settings to give a broader array of results. This is the harder of the two options and consists of disabling tracking cookies, hiding your personal information and using an anonymous IP address. A great guide by the University of Illinois can be found here.
The other approach is to try and follow as many new voices as possible. A good way to begin is to identify journalists in newspapers that traditionally have different political slants. Follow these journalists on Twitter, Facebook, read their blogs, articles and watch their videos. Lists such as these are useful starting points for finding as many new views and opinions as possible.
In an age of ‘fake news’, political change and turmoil, it is more important than ever to ensure that we understand and challenge the sources of news we are presented with. The 2017 election offers the opportunity re-engage with politics and show British, liberal democracy at its best. Let us not let the election create a breeding ground for filter bubbles nationwide.
