Popping the Filter Bubble....

Click HERE
Remember my previous post on the 'spiral of silence' as a reason why the virtual world misrepresents the real world?
There's actually another reason for this misrepresentation  -- a reason I have mentioned countless times every time I talked about the operating mechanism behind the internet.....On the internet, we often gravitate to those information sites that are in accordance with our values and preferences. For example, if you are pro-PAP, it is unlikely that you will want to go to Opposition websites...end result, your perception of the real world is confined to only the pro-PAP kind of info; in short, you will watch the world through pro-PAP tinted lenses, and only see the world the way PAP wants you to see it.....Hence, all these promises about the internet widening our perspectives, being able to influence our mindset (whether positively or negatively) are in a sense over-exaggerations....ISIS able to recruit members online? perhaps, but only if we want to go to their sites and be influenced and then get recruited.....if we don't even want to go there in the first place, their presence online will have little or no effect on us....
Apparently, there's a term for all these : FILTER BUBBLE.
Other than the silence of the majority or the tyranny of the minority online(via echo-chamber effect), it is this filter bubble phenomenon online that is distorting our perception of the real world out there beyond the computer screen..

Excerpt from link:
Basically, filter bubbles are created when algorithms on websites such as Facebook and Google try to personalise the Internet experience for users.
The algorithms analyse information about a user, such as what he likes to click on to read or watch and the friends he tends to follow the closest. They then serve only news articles, postings or videos that is their best guess of what the user might like to see.
As a result, the user starts to become separated from any information that he disagrees with. He sees only the information and viewpoints that he likes, effectively isolating him in his own cultural or ideological bubble.
In other words, the Internet is no longer that neutral source of information that many thought it was. "The Internet is showing you what it thinks you should be seeing, instead of what you should be seeing," says Pariser.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg put it more starkly:
"A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa."


So there you go, for those who have been doing the SPOT&POP exercise, note that t's also crucial to pop that filter bubble blinding you to the real world out there.....