Social media can be used to accumulate and amplify our beliefs and preferences. Our interests, associations and interactions in the virtual world can shapes our world view.
Some have appropriated this platform for activism - to present an argument, prove a point and further their cause. They carry their personal biases into the virtual world. Content (words,links, images, videos) that resonates with, strengthens and vindicate their viewpoint is widely circulated.Often they feed off people who hold similar views or defend against opponents of their cause.
We face a constant onslaught of misinformation promulgated by fixated individuals. We inadvertently add noise to the system acting on our natural impulses. There is a need to develop a method that will filter out these distortions.
Communications theory can be used as an approximate model to describe the issue .The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. The terms used in communication theory (noise, information, capacity, channel and bandwidth) can't be referred in exact context in social media parlance but it presents an interesting parallel.
Shannon [1] was concerned with transmitting messages through a channel even in the presence of noise.
- Noise and distortion may be differentiated on the basis that distortion is a fixed operation applied to the signal, while noise involves statistical and unpredictable perturbations
- Distortion can, in principle, be corrected by applying the inverse operation, while a perturbation due to noise cannot always be removed, since the signal does not always undergo the same change during transmission
- If the noise is increased over the value for which the system was designed, the frequency of errors increases very rapidly
- Narrow Framing - Narrow framing means that you are not considering all the alternatives available to you and defining your choices too narrowly.
- Does the argument or position covers a narrow cross-section or presents it in binary terms.
- Does it not even consider options that may be better?
- Is there a tendency to put a spotlight on specific aspect while neglecting positions that do not support the argument or are contrary?
- Action: Widen Your Opinions
- Confirmation bias - Confirmation bias means that when you want or believe an idea to be true, you pay more attention to the information that supports that belief. People naturally tend to select information that supports their pre-existing attitudes, beliefs and actions.
- Does the viewpoint feed to our confirmation bias?
- Action: Reality Test Your Assumptions
- Short term emotion - Short-term emotion clouds thinking. When you are emotional about a decision, you might replay arguments over and over until you can’t think straight, even though the facts have not changed.
- Does the argument only panders to your emotions or asks you to take immediate action on some issue without proper consideration
- Action: Attain Distance Before Deciding
- Overconfidence. Overconfidence is believing that we know what the future holds. Being overconfident leads to not considering alternatives or what might happen if your choice doesn't work out well.
- Are the views projecting any foregone conclusions for a future event?
- Action: Prepare to Be Wrong
I end by quoting Robertson Davies "Be sure you choose what you believe and know why you believe it, because if you don’t choose your beliefs, you may be certain that some belief, and probably not a very credible one, will choose you."
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