Social media can isolate people from viewpoints they disagree with. Eli Pariser, an internet activist, calls this the “filter bubble”. Researchers at Indiana University’s Network Science Institute who analysed links shared on Twitter and searches on AOL, a web portal, showed that the sites reached from social media are much less diverse than those reached from a search engine. Pablo Barberá, formerly of SMaPP and soon to join the University of Southern California, who examined the political Twitterspheres in America, Germany and Spain, found they were indeed polarised, particularly in America.
"Tracking protest movements: A new kind of weather," The Economist, Accessed on March 27, 2016, http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21695192-social-media-now-play-key-role-collective-action-new-kind-weather
This is one of the reasons I do not get my news from social media. I like to get a diverse set of views. Generally, in fact, I don't much care for social media at all and think it may actually be a bad thing in many respects. I'd be curious to know if anyone social scientists have looked into whether or not social media is a kind of emotional accelerant. I'd be willing to bet it is.
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