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Social Media Echo Chambers: Hindering Rhetorical Innovation

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Summer Wilderson HNRS 1100.001 Dr. Sean Ryan 07 March 2024 Social Media Echo Chambers: Hindering Dialectical Innovation I. Introduction The emergence of Social Media began to erupt in the early 2000s with platforms such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. These platforms have had an impact on society that is still ongoing to this day. This period marked a major shift in how people communicated through the internet and in general. This led to the enforcement of social media as a dominant force in modern society. When considering how we communicate as a society, the existence of dialectical thinking has a large impact on how we consider diverse perspectives, address conflicting ideas, and synthesize opposing viewpoints. This cognitive …show more content…

Overcoming the Echo Chamber Effect To overcome the social media echo chambers that are an active issue today, we must address the problem structurally. If social media apps begin to allow a feed of general and diverse ideas or issues, alongside our typical feed, then we will start to see gradual improvements in critical thinking, the way we challenge ideas and overall synthesization. However, this will likely cease to ever happen because social media is structured in a way that keeps us interacting with things we like to see more of the same or similar content. "The fact that social media platforms confirm what we already believe is the reason many people use them in the first place," he says. "If the platforms didn't do that, they wouldn't be successful." This being said, "it's up to us to construct an online environment that encourages our lazy brains to burst the confirmation bias bubble and consider all available angles." (Seneca, 2020) We must promote diverse perspectives and choose to actively seek differing ideas as a society. This will be the beginning of a revolution of rejecting toxic online echo chambers and the start of a new age of mental advancements and a harmonious society due to open-mindedness and the free flow of perspectives of all people. VI. Conclusion Understanding the echo chamber phenomenon, we see how this idea can warp dialectical thinking and hinder the synthesis phase. To overcome the echo chamber effect, there will need to be implemented structural changes and personal initiatives to put an end to the toxic theory. In the end, it starts with us when we choose to interact with certain content, and we have the power to also put an end to it as well. When we reject the algorithm and accept critical thinking skills back into our lives, echo chambers will no longer have room to exist in our

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