Video Preview: Are Filter Bubbles Real?

Within the next month or two, Polity Press will publish my new book Are Filter Bubbles Real?, which critically evaluates the ‘filter bubble’ as well as ‘echo chamber’ concepts that have been blamed for much of the current communicative and political dysfunction around the world. The book takes a sceptical view, and shows how these ill-conceived metaphors are actively distracting us from more important questions that are related not to the role of search engines and social media platforms and their algorithms in channelling our information and communication streams, but to the fundamental drivers of a growing societal and ideological polarisation that is now felt across many developed and developing nations around the world.

In the lead-up to the book’s launch, I have already begun to present some of its main arguments in a number of venues around the world. In addition to my recent presentation at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies in Duisburg in April, an invited plenary presentation at the African Digital Media Research Methods Symposium at Rhodes University, Makhanda, at the end of this week, and a paper at the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) conference in Madrid in July, I’ve also had the opportunity to give an invited talk at the Digital Humanities Research Group at Western Sydney University on 22 May 2019, and the colleagues there have now posted a video of my talk on YouTube.

So, if you’d like a preview of the main themes in the book, here it is: