Online echo chambers (via @gunthert): A study of 250 million Facebook users reveals the Web isn’t as polarized as we thought. - Slate Magazine
►http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/01/online_echo_chambers_a_study_of_250_million_facebook_users_reveals_the_web_is
Although we’re more likely to share information from our close friends, we still share stuff from our weak ties—and the links from those weak ties are the most novel links on the network. Those links from our weak ties, that is, are most likely to point to information that you would not have shared if you hadn’t seen it on Facebook.
this suggests that Facebook (and the Web generally) isn’t simply confirming our view of the world
But there are two reasons why Bakshy’s research should be considered a landmark. First, the study is experimental and not merely observational. [...] The other crucial thing about this study is that it is almost unthinkably enormous. [...] in total, the study observed nearly 1.2 billion instances in which someone was or was not presented with a certain link. This scale is unheard of in academic sociological studies
It could only occur with the express consent of Facebook, and in the end it produced a result that is clearly very positive for the social network.
Bakshy’s study doesn’t indemnify the modern media against other charges that it’s distorting our politics. For one thing, while it shows that our weak ties give us access to stories that we wouldn’t otherwise have seen, it doesn’t address whether those stories differ ideologically from our own general worldview.
AND FINALLY
there’s still the question of how we interpret that news.