Facebook’s role in providing Americans with political news has never been stronger—or more controversial. Scholars worry that the social network can create “echo chambers,” where users see posts only from like-minded friends and media sources. Facebook encourages users to “keep an open mind” by seeking out posts that don’t appear in their feeds.
o demonstrate how reality may differ for different Facebook users, The Wall Street Journal created two feeds, one “blue” and the other “red.” If a source appears in the red feed, a majority of the articles shared from the source were classified as “very conservatively aligned” in a large 2015 Facebook study. For the blue feed, a majority of each source’s articles aligned “very liberal.” These aren't intended to resemble actual individual news feeds. Instead, they are rare side-by-side looks at real conversations from different perspectives. For my topic, I chose Immigration.
We then wrote our Bias Essay based off the sources in my reading list above. Our job was to investigate the way the issue is presented differently by the liberal left, the conservative right, and reliable/unbiased sources as you work to discover what is real and reliable news about this topic, what is fake or biased news about this topic, and who/what sources provided the most reliable information. My essay is linked in the button below.