In the world of politics, especially within the last two presidential election cycles, there have been few issues as widely discussed as polarization. Democrats and Republicans alike find themselves becoming increasingly divided, refusing to work together or with anyone whose beliefs do not closely align with their own.
This has created conflict both within the government, as well as between regular people who do not work in the political world. Part of what has caused such a stark divide is the presence of echo chambers within the media and government, preventing people from seeing anything beyond what they already believe.
What is an Echo Chamber
An echo chamber is a phenomenon that occurs in the media in which ideas and beliefs that people already have are further confirmed by news and information provided to them. This is often seen through people with certain political views strictly consuming media that aligns with their political views.
For example, Republicans will watch Fox News, only learning information that they already know or agree with, without these beliefs ever being questioned or challenged. Similarly, Democrats will watch MSNBC, creating the same problem. This closely intersects with confirmation biases, “the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories.”
How can our Bias Meter help
Part of what perpetuates the existence of echo chambers within the media is that people are often unaware of the extent to which media organizations are biased. People consume the media they agree with without even realizing what they are consuming is manipulated. They then reaffirm their beliefs and are unable to visualize a world in which these beliefs are wrong, as they are constantly being told that they are correct.
With Biasly’s real-time A.I. bias meter, this problem can be significantly mitigated. If a viewer, for example, decides to look into an NBC segment on the new Supreme Court pick and their potential impact on abortion, they can understand whether the information they are learning is simply confirming what they already believe through biased reporting, or whether they are receiving relatively bias-free news. They simply look up the article they are curious about, and can find an instant evaluation of how biased the NBC article is.
The reader would find that the article has a moderate-right leaning, giving them an informed view of how biased the article is. Instead of having their views repeatedly confirmed by biased media, AI bias evaluations are mathematical calculations, providing independent assessments of all media organizations and individual articles.
People can instantly become informed about how biased the media they consume is. They can decide what the biases are, based on the statistics and readings we provide, that does not perpetuate echo chambers. Though this is not an end all be all solution to the issue of echo chambers in society, a wider implementation of AI bias scoring could begin to make media generally less biased, and therefore less likely to contribute to the echo chamber. Though the Biasly algorithm is not perfect yet, AI is helping to hone in on the accuracy of the ratings through real-time updates, giving the most accurate real-time evaluations of media biases.