Homophily Essay

800 Words4 Pages

Overview On an average school day, I would use less time intensive media like YouTube, Google and mobile games. They are typically consumed on portable devices like laptop, ipad and smart phone for a maximum of one hour per session in school. On an average weekend, I would use more time intensive media like Tumblr, Touken Ranbu and anime/shows at home. These time intensive media are consumed on the desktop. On average, I usually spend about 5 hours on Touken Ranbu and 3 hours on Tumblr. The majority of the media I consume is of Japanese origin but it’s mostly anime, manga, light novels, Jpop and games like Rune Story, Quiz RPG and Touken Ranbu. A lot more emotions were also evoked through the consumption of Japanese media. No matter the occasion/media, I …show more content…

Homophily is concept where similar people are more likely to connect with one another than among dissimilar people. (McPherson, Smith-Lovin & Cook, 2001) There are various types of homophily but the one that best explains my media usage is value homophily. In reference to Lazarsfeld & Merton’s initial definition (1954), I define value homophily as the tendency to seek out and identify with people or content who shares the invidual’s values, attitudes and beliefs. This motivation be seen in fig 1.0 With constant consuming of value homophilic media, I have inevitably created an echo chamber around me. The echo chamber effect states that similar viewpoints are fortified whereas opposing viewpoints are either silenced or ignored. (Sunstein, 2007 as cited in Williams, McMurray, Kurz, & Lambert, 2015) The research conducted by William et al., (2015) has also found that users inhabiting echo chambers, are more likely to hold polarised views than users who are exposed to an assortment of views. The echo chamber effect can be seen in fig