The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the World Wide Web is a fruitful environment for the massive diffusion of unverified rumors. In this work, using a massive quantitative analysis of Facebook, we show that information related to distinct narratives––conspiracy theories and scientific news––generates homogeneous and polarized communities (i.e., echo chambers) having similar information consumption patterns.
Basically, Facebook becomes an echo chamber for like minded individuals, limiting access to information that is contrary to the beliefs of the echo chamber.
Facebook’s secretive advertising practices became a little more public on Monday thanks to a leak out of the company’s Australian office. This 23-page document discovered by The Australian (paywall), details in particular how Facebook executives promote advertising campaigns that exploit Facebook users’ emotional states—and how these are aimed at users as young as 14 years old. According to the report, the…
Multitasking is a big part of the modern world. People are constantly doing two things at once; they send emails when they are spending time with their loved ones, they work out while texting a friend and they cook while they check Facebook. However, all of this multi-tasking is bad for your brain. Recent studies…
During the 2015-16 school year, I visited schools across the nation to see how technology can transform teaching and learning. The changes I’ve seen have been exciting, meaningful, and more often than not, challenging to get right. The “digital divide” is still very real. In places like Eminence, Kentucky, we’ve seen how creative school leaders have found…
Son won’t turn off his video game? Daughter obsessed with “likes” on Instagram? It may not be entirely their fault. Like the high-octane sugar in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and that irresistible chemical spice in Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, the ingredients in social media, video games, apps, and other digital products are carefully engineered…
Reverse image search is one of the most well-known and easiest digital investigative techniques, with two-click functionality of choosing “Search Google for image” in many web browsers. This method has also seen widespread use in popular culture, perhaps most notably in the MTV show Catfish, which exposes people in online relationships who use stolen photographs…
“With the first Marble Machine I just started to build… I ended up building the same things 10 times because I didn’t do any prototypes.” “A big part of our monkey brain wants immediate reward at all times. I’m now trying to keep that part of my monkey brain at bay by not doing the…
