Political Filter Bubbles and Fragmented Publics

This chapter asks to what extent citizens encounter sufficient, and sufficiently diverse, political content on digital media. Although the affordances of many digital platforms facilitate selective exposure, potentially leading users to avoid content they dislike or disagree with, other affordances facilitate serendipitous encounters with unsearched-for information, which might include content people dislike or disagree with. Yet, most scholarship and public debate have focused on selectivity rather than serendipity, as shown by the popularity of the metaphors of the “echo chamber” and the “filter bubble”. We review recent evidence from research based on different methods that shows that echo chambers and filter bubbles are less prevalent than is often assumed, that encounters with disagreeing opinions on social media are more common than in messaging apps and face-to-face conversations, and that an arguably bigger problem for democracy is that many citizens are exposed to little, if any, political content online.