An Echo Chamber is a metaphorical description of a situation on social or news media where one's own beliefs are strengthened by repeated consumption of the same and at the same time, opposing beliefs are shut down. Here is an hypothetical example to understand that phenomenon even better.
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I went to the explore tab in Instagram and started liking and interacting with posts and videos about cakes and baking. After a couple of days, my explore tab was filled with the same posts, this is a live comparative example for the concept of social media echo chamber.
Let us move to slight depths and understand a bit more about it.
I have a leaning towards content that talks positively about sport X and points out the cons of sport Y In a social media echo chamber, as I interact with the content of my liking that is pros about sport X and cons about sport Y, I will start getting similar content on my feed and at the same time, content of opposing nature will get suppressed.
What this does is, keep users away from opposing opinions of their own. They do not get exposed to the opposing ones and thus never get an opportunity to re-think their opinion or even to consider others. In turn, this situation promotes polarization and extremism too.
Have a look at the image, understand better!
What should we do about the echo chambers?
Every time, you express an opinion on the world wide web, be mindful of others, be mindful of other opinions, different to that of yours. Be considerate, be understanding and most important do not take sides before you make yourself aware of all the ones that are existing.
What that would do is, help prevent building up of extremism and polarization in the online world. With a little bit of considerate behavior and an open mind, the WWW world would be with a little less hate and a little more love!
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