This week I thought about the media that I consume and how I could expand on it. Most of the time when I am interacting with media via platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or even just googling something, I do not really think about what I am consuming. Part of the reason is that much of what I am seeing “favors information that confirms [my] beliefs” (MAET, 2020), better known as confirmation bias.
In order to examine my media consumption and push my boundaries, I took a controversial topic (standardized testing) in the education world and googled it. The first thing I noticed in the links that popped up was based on the link titles they appeared to agree with my thoughts on standardized testing.
This is when I realized that Eli Pariser’s idea of filter bubbles played a role in my media consumption. According to Pariser (2011) filter bubbles are “your own personal, unique universe of information that you live in online” (4:15). I needed to push my thinking on this topic so I changed the phrasing of what I was searching several times and made sure to look beyond the links on the first page. This is when I found the blog post Bless the Tests: Three reasons for standardized testing by Aaron Churchill. The post challenged my thinking and I wanted to know Churchill's thoughts on other topics. Lucky for me his Twitter @a_churchill22 was linked to the article and through there I was able to discover several other posts he has written that challenge my thinking on particular topics.
After examining my media consumption I realized that I need to spend more time seeking out a variety of viewpoints so that I can get a picture from every side of the story.
References
Jansen, C. (2020, July 16). First Links. [Image]
Master of Arts in Educational Technology (2020, Summer). Course content from Unit 4: Media Consumption and Designing and Innovative Learning Experience. Michigan State University, CEP 811: Adapting Innovative Tech to Ed. https://d2l.msu.edu/d2l/le/content/1003537/viewContent/9021695/View
TED. (2011, February). Beware online “filter bubbles” | Eli Pariser. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s&feature=emb_logo