{"id":5991,"date":"2016-11-08T08:05:15","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T13:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/faithlens\/?p=5991"},"modified":"2016-11-03T18:13:58","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T23:13:58","slug":"november-13-2016-echo-chamber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/faithlens\/november-13-2016-echo-chamber\/","title":{"rendered":"November 13, 2016–Echo Chamber"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill King, Blacksburg, VA<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Warm-up Question<\/strong><\/p>\n

Where do you get your information each day?\u00a0 How do you decide whether something you read or hear is true?<\/p>\n

Echo Chamber
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\"shutterstock_503747005\"<\/a>A recent cover story in the The Atlantic,<\/em> entitled \u201cHow Social Media Got Weaponized,\u201d explores how terrorist groups exploit social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to spread misinformation, recruit volunteers, and conduct a public relations campaign throughout the world.\u00a0 The task of such groups is made easier by the fact that we are remarkably resistant to testing the truth of what we read.<\/p>\n

One study found that \u201cthe likelihood of someone believing and sharing a story was determined by its coherence with their prior beliefs and the number of their friends who had already shared it\u2014not any inherent quality of the story itself.\u201d\u00a0 In other words we are much more likely to believe things which reinforce our biases and reflect the views of our peers than to allow new information to challenge our beliefs.<\/p>\n

This fact is even more troubling when you consider that most of us seek out information from a limited number of sources which tend to support our beliefs.\u00a0 Not only do we resist believing challenging information, we resist even hearing it.\u00a0 Some have said this results in the \u201cecho chamber effect;\u201d our pre-existing beliefs reinforce themselves, echoing in our heads until all we hear is what we have spoken into the chamber.<\/p>\n

Discussion Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n