What is an Echo Chamber?
An echo chamber is when a person only looks for and seeks out ideas that match his own ideas. In doing so, it reinforces what the person thinks or believes. This creates a problem on many levels due to the person only thinking and siding with his one idea. In doing so, it has a negative effect on society. This echo chamber will, over time, lead to bias and, at the extreme, discrimination of other ideas.
The Positives
There is only one major positive to an echo chamber. That positive is a feeling of community due to hearing the common ideas that you have in common with other people. This makes it, so you start to feel like you are being heard and understood. This overtime leads to the problems if trapped in an echo chamber because their person only knows their one community.
The negatives of an echo chamber are division in the news. This can be seen in two main political new sources on opposing sides in the USA, Fox, and CNN. This division is a problem because it divides the country because each mainly or only shares facts that benefit their side prescriptive. It also leads to the breakdown of the marketplace of ideas. The idea that the best idea will appear due to discussion and debate, but when people start to polarize themselves, it creates a problem. Echo chambers make people stuck to think only one idea their idea is right, which angers me in politics because both sides, in some cases, argue different ways to solve a problem, but only their parties' solution is valid. The echo chamber also leads to what is called fake news. People who are stuck in an echo chamber hear the opposing side but refuse to lesson to it and claim it's fake news. It's not like they dont hear the other side. They just reject the idea that it could be true because it conflicts with what they believe is true.
The echo chamber, over time, will lead to greater division in the world. My Dad and I have a term when talking about division in politics. It's called “ping pong politics.” The best to explain what it is there is two-party and battle-causing division, and there is no middle ground. There is only ping and pong. There are no middle-ground choices because the average person in the US only knows and seeks the two sides. This division has led the two parties to get more and more divided over time due to their ideas. As someone who seeks both sides and attempts to understand both sides, it pains me to see no middle ground. I fear that if no middle ground can be established in my lifetime, we as a county can't stand together again.
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