When speaking about our activities in other sections of this website, we also underlined how new technologies are necessary to improve the user experience with new content, promoting awareness of the plurality of voices in the public debate and the dissolution of echo chambers.
But let’s see, what are the so-called echo chambers? Eco chambers are rooms we all have been visiting at least once in our life, indeed certainly very often, if we are regular social network users. The Treccani online vocabulary defines echo chambers as situations “in which more or less truthful information, ideas or beliefs are amplified by a repetitive transmission and retransmission within a homogeneous and closed environment, in which divergent visions and interpretations end up by finding no more consideration.”
In other words they are contexts that boost ideologica isolation!
How is it possible?
Being exposed to situations in which we receive a series of information or ideas that strengthen our point of view, will make us more likely to express our opinion because we know we will probably be supported by our group! But at the same time it will keep us more far from seeking other resources that could provide us with a more critical and objective view of the situation.
And what does this mean?
Individuals are more likely to express their ideas if they know they can do it within similar people, people with the same opinions, political tendencies, vote preferences or beliefs.
In some cases, however, these same people are not only more inclined to share their ideas, but also have less hesitation in making it so using bright tones and turning towards the most extreme positions, precisely because they know they have a certain support.
The question is: is there a way we can use new technologies to prevent these phenomena from degenerating? Lab4news was born for this reason too!