{"id":792,"date":"2016-03-30T16:02:19","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T20:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eiq.knx.mybluehost.me\/website_78d26930\/bigdatacourse?p=792"},"modified":"2016-03-30T16:02:19","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T20:02:19","slug":"filter-bubbles-opinion-polarization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/bigdatacourse\/filter-bubbles-opinion-polarization\/","title":{"rendered":"Filter Bubbles & Opinion Polarization"},"content":{"rendered":"

Political Polarization: The type “opinion\u00a0polarization” that I hear discussed most. Check out this ted talk<\/a> that I like and watched recently. It definitely spurred a lot of the thoughts behind this blog post.<\/p>\n

\"polarization\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So how did I get into “opinion polarization”? Well, that’s what I fear most after doing this exercise.<\/p>\n

I put out a lot of information. I looked at my 2 gb download from google for my NCSU account, but with my laptop’s small hard drive, I didn’t even want to download the 7gb file for my non-NCSU\u00a0account. For my NCSU account, the vast majority of my information was stored in gmail and google drive, but I also liked the 27,000 lines of code that kept track of my youtube history (probably another 100k lines associated with my non-NCSUaccount). So it’s obvious, I produce data by the gigabyte for internet giants like Google and Facebook to use.<\/p>\n

I need to disable adblock for a little while and see how advertisements are tailored towards me. I’m sure they are, \u00a0I just only see them on select sites that require me to disable adblock – none of which are sites that I visit regularly. But even if I did notice\u00a0the ads that target me, I don’t believe that I would be overly happy or overly unhappy with the targeted advertisements.<\/p>\n

What I’m most concerned about is the bias in information that I’m shown. I go to the internet for information. It’s my primary means of communicating. I likely receive more information via chrome than I do via spoken word. Why meet for a project when I can use google docs? Why drive home when I can facetime? Why go to office hours\u00a0when I can learn a concept on\u00a0youtube? So if the internet is my main means of digesting information, then it is scary knowing that each time I digest some information, I become less likely to digest a different type of information. \u00a0I had trouble with this filtering just last week as I struggled\u00a0to find articles from European media outlets on the Brussels attack as part of the social network analysis project.\u00a0This leads me to a question I asked myself earlier: Do I choose the friends that I fall out of contact with, or do the internet giants\u00a0choose them for me? Similarly, do I choose to read a liberal article, or did the internet giants\u00a0choose it for me?<\/p>\n

I think that the Zucherberg quote about the relevant, dying squirrel and the irrelevant, dying East African has scary implications for\u00a0the future of education in an internet-dependent world. We are supposed to be connected by the world wide web, but algorithms that excessively personalize information and create filter bubbles see us almost disconnected by the world wide web. Living in a filter bubble is a shame when I am 23 years old, but living in a filter bubble is a crime for someone who is 7 years old.<\/p>\n

Polarization over important issues is a problem that drives people to not properly listen, or not even bother speaking. I hope that the internet, an education and information source for most of the world, does not exacerbate this polarization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Political Polarization: The type “opinion\u00a0polarization” that I hear discussed most. Check out this ted talk that I like and watched recently. It definitely spurred a lot of the thoughts behind this blog post.   So how did I get into “opinion polarization”? Well, that’s what I fear most after doing this exercise. I put out
+ Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/bigdatacourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/bigdatacourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/bigdatacourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/bigdatacourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/bigdatacourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/bigdatacourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":800,"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/bigdatacourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions\/800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/bigdatacourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/bigdatacourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/bigdatacourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}