Professor Axel Bruns questions filter bubbles at MediaFutures seminar

There are good reasons to question the idea that social media has caused us to no longer have shared experiences of the world, professor Axel Bruns argued at his seminar hosted by the University of Bergen centre MediaFutures on 16 April.

"It has become this common wisdom that we are in these echo chambers. I think that is really problematic because it is obscuring reality" Axel Bruns, professor of Communication and Media Studies at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, said at the seminar.

Researchers from the DataPublics team participated in the seminar, as they equally experience that the discourse on filter bubbles remain strong among journalists and by the everyday users of both social media and news but also perhaps to an unwarranted degree. 

We lack evidence and definitions

Axel Bruns observes several issues with the contemporary scientific debate about filter bubbles on social media. Firstly, we lack clear and substantial empirical evidence that those bubbles are in fact as present in reality as everyday anecdotes and scientific case studies have suggested.

"A lot of the research seems too often to be case-based. We need to see the bigger picture and the overall view of social media platforms. The hashtags do not exist in isolation and the people who participate in the hashtag also have other connections on the same platforms that present them with other views and arguments," Axel Bruns said.

Secondly, we lack good definitions of what filter bubbles even are. Without common understandings of the concept, Axel Bruns noted, what some might interpret as hermetically sealed off filter bubbles, others would perhaps view as partisan communities.

"Essentially these ideas that should be empirically testable have been promoted by people who are not experts in the field. There is a need for us to test these concepts empirically. And when we do not have a definition there is a problem," the professor of communication and media studies said.

Axel Bruns published the book "Are Filter Bubbles Real" in 2019. His work revolves around questions of participation, social media spaces and the contemporary public sphere.