One afternoon in mid-November, a university journalism professor confided in me a not-so-shocking secret: “I only found out today what ‘Versailles literature’ actually means.” China’s latest buzzword was already all over the internet and on every student’s lips, but he had never encountered it during his daily online browsing sessions.…
The Trump administration's fight to question the election's outcome is providing a massive field test of the effectiveness of online echo chambers and filter bubbles.The state of play: So far, the evidence from the Trump universe shows partisan delusion winning out over objective reality.By the numbers: Some 70% of Republicans…
A remarkable essay in Wired has just caught my eye. “To mend a broken internet,” reads the headline, “create online parks.” The author is Eli Pariser, whose 2011 book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You, provided an extraordinarily prescient warning of the way our networked world…
HONG KONG — When ByteDance rebranded the US teen karaoke app Musical.ly it acquired as TikTok in 2018, it was just another short video app for American teens. Today it is the most downloaded app in the world, proving so popular that it has become a flashpoint in the escalating US-China…
This sort of research can, piece by piece, help reshape the online landscape so it isn’t quite so tribal and awash in misinformation and vitriol.Photograph by Prostock-studio / ShutterstockGiant tech companies and governments largely determine what content is and isn’t allowed online, and their decisions impact billions of people: 55…
TheirTube is a YouTube filter bubble simulator that provides a look into how videos are recommended on other people's YouTube home page. Each persona simulates a real YouTube user by recreating their viewing history and then displays their recommendation bubble. From their site: Each of these TheirTube personas is informed…
A heavy reliance on digital technology and systems that we don’t fully understand has eroded our digital trust. We are both concerned and confused by issues of data privacy, fake news, automated decision making and artificial intelligence. How did we get here and how can we rebuild trust?by Joshua Leigh,…