The post-truth of the information bubble

Roberto Aparici y David García-Marín
In 1932, Aldous Huxley published the first edition of his novel A Happy World, a portrait of a dystopian world in which individuals are programmed and segmented into different categories that annihilate all personal creation and tribalize a society where intergroup understanding is impossible . In Huxley's story, each individual must remain in his place, think and do what is expected of him. A world of post-truth and social bubbles designed for control. A reality that we feel present in our days.

Since Pariser introduced the concept of bubble filter to explain the construction of ideological niches on the Internet, much of the research on misinformation has focused on describing how network users are confined in these ideological echo cameras.
 
Using powerful big data instruments, these studies have tried to explain the generation of these bubbles in different contexts, such as the procés catalan or the 2016 US elections. This type of research aims to analyze how these ideological spaces are configured, how large they are and who they constitute them.

However, to correctly understand the phenomenon of post-truth in the digital world, we should not situate ourselves in the mere description of these bubbles, but rather deepen the analysis of the interaction of the individual within them, that is, discover the processes that take place in its interior.
These analyzes are fundamental since these bubbles constitute the channel where falsehood reaches further and circulates at a higher speed.

Analog and digital bubbles

The informational and ideological bubbles always existed. Before the arrival of the web, we all read the newspaper that best suited our way of looking at the world, we listened to the radio station that tuned in better with our beliefs, we selected the television and radio content according to our tastes, we participated in the associations and collectives that best represented our ideals, we used to frequent the spaces where we felt comfortable and chose our friendships for reasons of affinity. Our whole life was built from big bubbles.

All these habits continue to be present in our day to day. A study by Stanford University on political polarization in the United States concluded that this phenomenon occurs more sharply among the demographic groups with less presence in social networks: those over 65 years. Studies of this type limit the influence of digital networks in the manufacture of the current social fabric, highly segmented into niches.

In effect, networks are not responsible for information bubbles or social division. Both already existed before the networks.

So, what news has brought the digital ecosystem? In our latest book entitled Postverdad. A cartography of media, networks and politics (Gedisa, 2019), we point out that the key that explains the fake tendency and the propagation of hoaxes and false news in networks is found in the radicalization derived from the new interaction grammar of the users both with the information and with the others on the Net. In short, how our behavior within the digital bubbles takes us to extremes and changes our ways of representing the world.
 
In networks, the constant valuations of opinion leaders constitute a powerful ideological reinforcement for those who are always willing to reinforce the foundations of their own tunnel vision.

Radicalization of our positions

In the analog bubbles, the consumption of the media followed an individual pattern. We stood before the newspaper or in front of the television from the privacy of our homes. We built our perception of reality in the loneliness of our bubble. In the 21st century, the rules of the game have changed. The information reaches us increasingly through other types of echo cameras. Noisy, accelerated and multitudinous, these digital bubbles do not place us on an ideological side. Surely we were already before our penetration in them. Its effect focuses on the reinforcement and radicalization of our positions. Strengthen our sense of belonging to a group by increasing the distance with the opposing groups. They produce symbolic and effectively violent social universes.

For the expert sociologist in digital culture Zeynep Tufekci, "the reading of social media resembles what happens in football stadiums, where you hear the cries of the opposing team while you sit with your side." As Jaron Lanier points out, "integrated into a pack and led by the social pressure of the group, we are able to think and do things that would be inconceivable in situations of loneliness."
Influencers

In these echo chambers, the influence is not evenly distributed, but there are opinion leaders configured as participatory oligarchies that concentrate much of the relevance. This situation causes the distribution of influence to follow the model of the long tail, where the contents of very few users produce most of the impact, while most of the members of the bubble have a very limited scope.

In this context, the most interesting thing is to observe how, for the first time, any citizen can discover the opinion of these influencers about any issue that circulates inside the echo chambers. In our analog bubbles, it is impossible to know the vision of the reference figures with respect to most controversial issues of a political and social nature. Through the press or the radio, we can only know the perspective of a few experts.

However, in the networks, the constant and ubiquitous assessments of a multiplicity of opinion leaders, famous journalists, political and ideological referents, gurus, hyperpartisan media and figures from the sport or show business constitute a powerful ideological reinforcement for those who, following Their cognitive biases are always ready to reinforce the foundations of their own tunnel vision.

Likewise, each digital bubble leads to other bubbles that tend to reproduce their ideological bias. According to our research focused on the production and dissemination of disinformation in networks, each bubble is the gateway to other echo chambers where the same messages are repeated.

It is demonstrated that the majority of political hashtags on Twitter build networks of labels formed by digital spaces of the same ideological tendency. A narrative structure of plot and subframes -hashtags and subhashtags-is produced, where each bubble filters the access to similar ones in an infinite set of Russian dolls that scarcely leaves space for the elaboration of counter-discourses that diversify the conversation.

Context and social dialogue

Unlike what happens in analog bubbles, in digital echo cameras the information lacks context. Although not exempt from responsibility in the circulation of falsehood, analogue media have greater ability to offer the user certain explanations, certain frames, which place the contents in a specific space and place, give meaning and justify the appearance of information in the own medium.

Contextual frames make the stories understandable. In digital bubbles, we are permanently hit by small pieces of information without that fundamental prior background. Many times, without references or reliable sources. Without clear enunciator.

The way of interacting with the information in these digital echo cameras from the scroll (the sliding of the interface to consume the contents as a timeline) causes the superficial, fast and ephemeral reading of a series of textualities arranged algorithmically according to of the likes, beliefs, browsing patterns and previous actions (likes, retweets and comments) of the user.

The algorithm of the bubbles works under a logic of reproduction, showing first the subjects and the contents that have the greatest relationship with the user, establishing an endogamic pattern of visualization of the digital stories that generates an evident expulsion of the different.
 
The digital bubbles radicalize us, they show us a world without the possibility of meaning or discussion, without a coherent enunciation or a visible enunciator.

Monologues above the conversation

The consequence of this model is the elimination of all political and deliberative community on the Net. Without the presence of the other, of the different, there is no possible dialogue. The so-called social networks produce discourses without socialization based on the creation of "resonance boxes of the self". The sum of monologues prevails over the conversation.

The digital bubbles radicalize us, they show us a world without the possibility of meaning or discussion, without a coherent enunciation or a visible enunciator. They put us in the position of playing like, retweet, remix and sharing the biased and false contents that flood our virtual spaces every day.

In the line expounded by Neil Postman in his play Divertirse hasta morir, we are players seduced by the promise of participation in a global game where our voice almost never resonates strongly, but where our actions have political and economic value that monetize the technological elites from processes of neobehaviorism, always under the commodification of our data.

An era of control based on a new behaviorism is only possible from a post-truth regime. A renewed, refined and invisible behaviorism, fundamental for the construction of a new order, platform capitalism. In this way, post-truth is primarily a question about us, converted into inhabitants of our own, artificial and bubbly happy world.