This day and age, almost everyone and their mothers wake up to check their phones to peruse Instagram, Facebook and other news outlets. Growing up, I was used to my parents turning on the news each morning until I changed the channel to cartoons. Many years later, each of us now pull out our news sources from the small screens in our pockets.
The past six months or so have particularly brought about conversations regarding news sources and where exactly the public’s information comes from. GCFGlobal defines an echo chamber as “an environment where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect and reinforce their own.” Being a current college student, most of my initial interpretations of the outside world come from my main social media platform of choice: Instagram. My many peers swirl around shared threads and reposted articles through their personal “stories” feature, making everyone able to easily access new information that spreads like wildfire. I find that through this endless cycle in one singular app, I am living in an echo chamber.
During the time of the 2020 election, I found it of great importance to break the chain of popularized posts and possible misinformation. Instead of sticking my nose into every account on social media, I now roam the internet and archives in search of articles, science-based evidence and multiple outlets that no do not warp information. Research has shown that people equate the level of popularity in a piece with its quality, making it prevalent that society builds up what they believe will be accepted and praised.
This creates echo chambers anywhere people are bouncing like-minded thoughts off each other. This is also fed by the confirmation bias, where people are mentally reassured something is correct if others agree with it in the first place. Breaking the curse of political bias and misinformation is the key to better understanding digital media literacy. Selective reading is not true reading. One can only open their mind to the world when all ideologies and backgrounds are respected and given space for exploration. The echo chamber we often fall into is either too much or not enough. It is either closing off other bits of news and other views of situations, or it is an overwhelming amount of emotional charge being sent around the circle of similar interpretations.
When the Capitol riots happened in early January, my Instagram feed was a circulation of anger, awareness and a breeding ground for anxiety. Balancing the intake of news is something the echo chamber cutsout; an inescapable burden to some trying to manage sensitivity.
In defense of the echo chamber, certain places in politics are not up for debate. Some minority groups such as people of color and Indigienous Peoples cannot rely on certain ideologies like far-right extremists. The echo chamber does offer a circle of asylum for those who are working to inform and stay informed of necessary, undebatable social change. Protecting one another is a factor at play because living in an echo chamber, when fully recognized, can offer empowerment and support.
It is not the matter of if the echo chamber exists, however, because sometimes the echo chamber is right. Sometimes there is a chain where one photo, or one released video, or one written article can ignite the activism of thousands at a time. Thanks to habitual usage of social media, news is being sent around faster than ever. With the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, there were protests in every part of the U.S. and across the globe because of media circulation. Sometimes being part of a social circle online means getting to speak out in crucial moments. With issues in politics that have been long debated, however, scientific proof does not always determine how it will be governed.
The debate about abortion has been passed around to many lengths, to where the government still dances with technicalities, and there are two main echo chambers keeping people stuck in their own track of thinking. It is also seen that the overall problem with us living in an echo chamber cuts us off from general trust — so much so that citizens start to slowly lose trust in scientific resources. Many are distrusting the COVID-19 vaccine, and despite scientific evidence of its effectiveness, Facebook threads are to blame for baseless echoes.
After theory upon theory and molded bits of information that may or not be true, minds tend to become overwhelmed with the lack of natural proof. Our sources of information have evolved year by year. We now have a growing tendency to entrap ourselves in situations where a million echoes of repeated information are bouncing around us, ear to ear. It seems the only escape we have from close mindedness is to break away.
Kristine Kearns is a first-year English major with a minor in Creative Writing. KK947319@wcupa.edu