Saturday update

In our discussion about online extremism Monday, we mentioned several ways in which people can be exposed only to material consonant with their beliefs. The potential effect of this is polarization. One route to polarization is via selective attention, where we deliberately go to information consonant with our beliefs and we avoid information in opposition to our beliefs. Another route is via unintended selective attention, where material is filtered before we receive it, often without us even being aware of it. Eli Pariser wrote a book about this called The Filter Bubble and gave an excellent Ted Talk about it here. (This is also linked on the discussion blog.) This is well worth watching! Please do so.

Readings are posted here.