Homeophily and Polarization

 

Section One

Homeophily is the tendency humans have to want to be around other humans who have similar interests they do, while polarization is when a social or political group is divided into two opposing sub groups (Guerra, 2013).  There are plenty of ways that we can do that on social media.  One way is that we can search for people who like similar things we do in groups.  Groups are designed to be special places full of people who like the same things, or have the same opinions.  Almost everybody has certain groups they belong to now, it’s become very common place.

Section Two

When algorithms starts to play a factor into what users on social media seen on their feeds problems started to arise.  People stopped seeing the whole truth.  They started only seeing what they wanted to see, things that mirrored their beliefs and the things they liked.  So if a person has beliefs that were a little more extreme then social media just fed their anger and hatred.  It turned them against others that they cared for because they had different beliefs, and because all they seen was what they believed they never thought to research what might be the actual truth.  Even now there are a lot of people who don’t know about the algorithms and believe their opinion is the only right one.  Social media has done the world a great disservice by doing so.  It’s made it hard to debate issues with each other because of extreme anger and close mindedness.  Algorithms have greatly contributed to loneliness and polarization (Guerra, 2013).

Section Three

The only real way to truly combat this problem is for people to be told algorithms firstly, to make sure everybody knows.  Then they need to be taught how to research, since researching things the wrong way can cause the same problem.  If they are looking up a way to back their own beliefs that is exactly what they will find.  Social media has started an undercurrent of hate in the world that we are only now starting to see the price of.  As with any other problem, the first and best place to start is always with educating people about the problem.  People need to come together and demand that this be stopped, or for social media outlets to find a better way to do it.

The world doesn’t need anything else causing more division amongst it’s people.  There ar enough problems without the added anger and division.  We all need to come together as one, that is what is the most important thing is.  We need to learn tolerance, and learn that it is ok to have different opinions.  That is what is the most important thing.

 

References

Guerra, P. H. C., Meira Jr, W., Cardie, C., & Kleinberg, R. (2013, July). A Measure of Polarization on Social Media Networks Based on Community Boundaries. In ICWSM.