Lecture 7 Flashcards
(31 cards)
What are echo chambers?
Environments where agents are only exposed to like-minded opinions, reinforcing their views and limiting alternative perspectives.
What is the difference between ‘chamber’ and ‘echo’ in echo chambers?
‘Chamber’ refers to segregation in networks; ‘echo’ refers to belief reinforcement through non-Bayesian communication.
Why is political content personalization harder to analyze than price personalization?
Because preferences and content quality are hard to measure, and welfare effects are more complex and societal.
Why might agents segregate by preferences?
To facilitate coordination, cooperation, or public good provision due to strategic complementarities.
Why might agents segregate by beliefs?
Due to preferences for belief consonance or motivated reasoning, where beliefs are part of one’s identity or utility.
What does Tiebout (1956) argue about segregation?
Communities segregate to optimize tax-funded public goods based on preference.
What does Goyal et al. (2020) show about coordination and segregation?
Even with shared preferences for coordination, heterogeneous ideal points can lead to inefficient segregation.
What insight does Crawford & Sobel (1982) contribute?
Communication becomes less informative as preferences diverge in cheap-talk games.
What is a ‘motivated belief’?
A belief adopted strategically because it aligns with one’s identity, utility, or past actions.
What do Bénabou and Tirole (2011, 2016) argue about beliefs?
Beliefs can be assets that provide utility and are shaped by strategic motivations like identity or self-confidence.
What three biases are relevant to echo chambers?
Selection bias, correlation neglect, and motivated beliefs.
How does correlation neglect affect belief updating?
People ignore the redundancy of information from their network, treating it as independent.
What is polarization?
A bimodal distribution of beliefs or political preferences, with positions clustering at extremes.
How do echo chambers and polarization affect information aggregation?
They limit learning via biased communication and suboptimal information provision from political agents.
What does Schultz (1996) show about polarization?
Polarized parties stop adapting platforms to the state of the world, making learning from platforms ineffective.
What are political consequences of polarization?
More extreme candidates, worse voter information, lower competition, instability, and ineffective policymaking.
What does Glaeser et al. (2005) say about turnout and extremism?
Greater voter heterogeneity increases the likelihood of extreme candidate success.
What are macroeconomic consequences of polarization?
Worse household expectations, slower growth, erosion of democratic trust, and risk of violent conflict.
Can echo chambers have positive effects?
Yes; they can improve communication in strategic settings and preserve minority interests.
Why is extreme homogeneity also problematic?
It may indicate repression or lack of opposition, threatening democratic representation.
What makes social media exacerbate behavioral biases?
Opaqueness in algorithmic filtering, network complexity, news replication, and difficulty tracing information origin.
What does Levy and Razin (2018) show?
Correlation neglect in repeated communication on social media contributes to polarization.
What did Bakshy et al. (2015) find about Facebook algorithms?
Algorithmic ranking reduces exposure to cross-cutting content by 15%.
What did Alcott et al. (2020) find about quitting Facebook?
It reduced both factual knowledge and political polarization.
