We happy to announce that Scott Downham passed his PhD viva, for the thesis, How Few Citizens are Socialised into Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers, and the Implications for Democracy. His thesis was co-supervised by Ben O’Loughlin and James Sloam, and his examiners were Prof. Shakuntala Banaji (LSE) and Dr. Richard Fletcher (University of Oxford). Thanks to Prof. Joost van Spanje and Prof. Sarah Childs for providing substantive suggestions in Scott's annual reviews. Scott is already a Lecturer at King’s College London.
How Few Citizens are Socialised into Filter Bubbles and Echo Chambers, and the Implications for Democracy
Since the shock popularity and victories of Brexit and Donald Trump, there has been concern that citizens exist in democratically dysfunctional ideological bubbles, where they only hear likeminded perspectives. Researchers have examined the extent of these bubbles - particularly through analysis of digital platforms such as search engines and social media. However, these studies are limited in either external or internal validity. This study uses a holistic approach, exploring causes and effects of ‘embubblement’ in one marginal, perhaps high-risk group, young people, who get more news online and are considered more impressionable. This mixed-methods digital ethnography contains a 10-wave cohort study, diary study hybrid. One day a month for 10 months, participants aged 16-18 (n=20) captured any political communication they encountered across all mediums - online and in-person. Embubblement is operationalised not just as the extent to which participants encounter disagreement, but by looking at whether citizens are open-minded to the opposing perspectives. Regression analysis suggests strength of partisanship positively correlates with embubblement (H1), though no participants were strongly embubbled (even strong partisans). No statistically significant correlations emerged between embubblement and increased embubblement over time (H2) or political polarisation (H3). Embubblement did, however, positively correlate with degree of political engagement (H4). Ethnography explored what causes embubblement (RQ1). Embubblement occurred rarely, influenced by structural factors: ‘socialising agents’, such as family, peers, education, media, and events. This thesis makes a new contribution, generating a typology of factors that shape embubblement, incorporating an agent-centred approach. Main factors were agreeable news sites, apps and hyperpartisan social media communities. The research addresses the question of agency – for example, a user making a new TikTok account, to reset personalisation algorithms after realising the existing ones were radicalising her. Implications for schools and policy-makers are addressed through recommendations on how to encourage political engagement without embubbling citizens.