Dear Social Media, how dare you influence our choices ?

As a kid Eli Pariser picture the internet as something that connect all the people together. Indeed he hoped that it was going to be something great for democracy and our society. But as he grew up he realize that information does not flow openly online. Observing his own social media, like Facebook, he figure out that he did not see the posts of his conservative friends on his feed anymore. (he is progressive). Thus he figure out that Facebook hide from him some post that are theoretically different from his own political opinion. Eli Pariser gave a name to this fact : the « filter bubble ».

Moreover searchers showed that the filtering algorithm of facebook limit the free-will of the internet. Indeed by excluding a part, a point of view or some interpretation of the information, the internaut get stuck on his own opinion and doesn’t develop his critical mind. Let’s have a concrete exemple. There is two people : one democrat and one republicain. If the both are searching « BP » in the internet they will have very different result. One is going to find informations about the investment in the British Petroleum whereas the other one will have article dealing with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Thus filter bubble reduce the informational field of the internaut and therefore influence our choices.

But is this fully bad for us ? The success of the social media and the rising of the mass media has lead search engine ans social media leaders to develop those algorithm. By bringing to the fore relevant informations social media allow us to have instantly ans constantly valuable information.

So we can ask ourselves : is this « filter bubble » really harmful for the internaut. Or rather an easier way to have access to pertinent informations.

Emma PELIGRY