The echo chamber potential of social media systems – particularly when both algorithms, and accidents of practice (.e.g. I miss the ‘working hours’ twitter feed from other countries because I’m not up and watching at that time) are actively filtering the content we consume – is definitely something we need to understand more.

I certainly find the shift from blog-reading via RSS, with a stock of blog posts, to keeping updated via Twitter, where there is far more a flow of content, changes the extent to which I’m exposed to homogenous, or differentiated materials.

The relative inaccessibility of cases other than our own in the social media space (at least, the inaccessibility of the experience of being at the heart of some other social media ‘echo chamber’ or environment) is in many ways surprising.

In both research terms, and in everyday practice as individuals engaged in social media mediated information environments, it’s interesting to ask whether the ‘solutions’ to an echo chamber, are in better algorithms (or the choice of algorithm), or in developing our own critical practice at seeking out and adding differentiated voices to our own information environments…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by postdocal: the social media echo chamber: how habit and algorithm combine to keep us thinking we’re the center of the universe http://bit.ly/cgH4rG...