Blog 11: EOTO

After watching many fascinating presentations on awareness, mediasphere, and policy in the media, I have learned a lot about privacy and bias in the media. A group that I was very interested in was the Mediasphere. One that stood out to me, in particular, was the Echo Chamber. "An echo chamber is an environment where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect and reinforce their own." It can cause misinformation on a person's perspective and a lack of knowledge on opposing viewpoints, due to unfairly distributed information. As seen in the picture below, when a person is given information on their side on an argument, social will feed more information that leans toward your side.

This causes people to struggle with hearing opposing viewpoints. This is seen especially in politics. If someone uses a social media app like TikTok, the app will recognize your political party based on the videos you watch and will begin to only offer you information on a specific party. 

Without having an equal share of different opinions, people can become bias toward their group and segregate people from others due to their opinions. People become less open to views that are not like theirs, not because they are bad people but because society has never exposed another view besides their own.

I really enjoyed learning about the effects of social media and made me more aware of how I'm educated through the media.

Citations: 

“Digital Media Literacy: What Is an Echo Chamber?” GCFGlobal.org, edu.gcfglobal.org/en/digital-media-literacy/what-is-an-echo-chamber/1/.

(Photos)

Toledonews. “How Our Political Echo Chamber Works.” The Blade, 15 Sept. 2017, www.toledoblade.com/opinion/editorials/2017/09/15/How-our-political-echo-chamber-works/stories/feed/index.rss.

Elizabeth Dubois and Grant Blank. Published on Mar 9, 2018 9:16am. “The Myth of the Echo Chamber.” IPolitics, 13 Mar. 2018, ipolitics.ca/2018/03/09/myth-echo-chamber/.