Week 20 - 'Social media 'echo chamber' causing political tunnel vision, study finds'

'Social media 'echo chamber' causing political tunnel vision, study finds'
http://news.sky.com/story/social-media-echo-chamber-causing-political-tunnel-vision-study-finds-10755219

• Research appears to confirm the existence of an "echo chamber" effect in UK politics, in which social media users are more likely to engage with people and media sources that share their political beliefs
• The study found that supporters of the SNP and UKIP were much less likely to engage with people holding different beliefs, or to tweet material from outlets with opposing editorial stances
• "The existence of echo chambers and the idea that we are increasingly seeing things that we agree with, things that we like, things that we might buy, challenges some of the fundamental principles democracy thrives on.
• That makes us develop a very limited tunnel vision of reality, of products, of ideology, of political stances

This supports the idea that we do not challenge what we see and therefore supports fake news stories and explains why these are possible and difficult to pin-point as 'fake.' The idea that we conform to certain ideologies and therefore do not venture out to understand alternative viewpoints shows that we are a generation that are set in its ways and a society that does not really conform to change.