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.
When it comes to kids, growth mindset is a hot topic in education. Studies indicate that children who view intelligence as pliable and responsive to effort show greater persistence when encountering new or difficult tasks. In contrast, children who view intelligence as static or “fixed” have a harder time rebounding from academic setbacks or are…
Using a database of past tweets, they were able to effectively pick out the next words a user was likely to use. But they were able to do so more effectively if they simply had access to what a person’s contacts were saying on Twitter. Source: Social media can predict what you’ll say, even if you…
I can’t put my hands on the thing right now, but I’m pretty sure that the Parenting Manual I was issued when my kids were born deemphasized the importance of keeping up with changes in the way they do things as they grow up. The worksheets and hand-written essays of their younger years have changed…
NASA has created an online image and video library. The library consists of more than 140,000 images, videos, and audio files from NASA. Media can be browsed by newest added files, or you can search by keyword or object name. The new website consolidates media from more than 60 collections. Since the media was created by…
For a long time, I’ve been a list-maker and a note-taker. You should see my desk. It can get littered with them pretty easily. The worst is when I would take down some valuable details and then leave the paper sitting on my desk at school. I have literally driven to school late at night…
On a stage in San Francisco, IBM’s Project Debater spoke, listened and rebutted a human’s arguments in what was described as a groundbreaking display of artificial intelligence. The machine drew from a library of “hundreds of millions” of documents – mostly newspaper articles and academic journals – to form its responses to a topic…
