Information Literacy In Real Life (IL IRL)

Filter Bubbles

If you and two other friends all Googled "whales" at the same time, it is highly likely everyone would get different results. One person might get results with scientific information about whales, one person might get ads for aquariums, and another person might get conservation information about whales. The reason why every person gets different results whenever they do a search is because websites like Google and Facebook use algorithms to personalize your results for you.

This personalization creates a filter bubble, which means that a website's algorithm is showing you the information that the website thinks you'll be interested in and click on. This means that the website is excluding other perspectives and points of view in your search results and acting as a gatekeeper to decide what information it will show you. This can make it difficult to find sources from other viewpoints that you don't normally read, because all of the sources will follow the same perspective.

When you are doing research using Google, it is important to recognize when you might be in a filter bubble. After looking at a few sources, consider the following questions:

• Are all of my sources following the same perspective or point of view?
• Am I getting the same information over and over again?
• Is there a point of view that is missing from my sources?

To learn more about Filter Bubbles, check out Eli Pariser's TED Talk, "Beware of Online 'Filter Bubbles.'"