Announcement of the SNP's legal challenge to BBC debate policy, 2010. Photo: Andrew Milligan / PA Archive/Press Association Images. All rights reserved. A week before the EU referendum, a message popped up on my Facebook news feed. Someone had posted a request: “Is there anyone on here who is going to vote Brexit? And if so could you explain your reasons to me (you can PM me if you want)? I am very aware that I don’t know a single person who is pro Brexit…”
The day after the referendum Facebook was full of comments like these, only they were less curious and more angry. This is shameful, they said. Why could so many be so stupid. Some even called for ‘un-friending’ the Leavers. The friendly appeal on my news feed just a week before- ‘could you explain your reasons to me?’- had been replaced by bitterness and recrimination "F**k this. I am ashamed to be British". It felt as though the country had lost its innocence.
Speaking at a TED conference in 2011, Eli Pariser warned of the dangers of the Internet (and Google and Facebook in particular) hermetically sealing us within our political sub-groups; warm comforting echo chambers where we see our views reflected back to us. You ‘like’ my post and I’ll ‘like’ yours back. More recently, a spate of “no-platforming” controversies in the UK and the US have highlighted our all-too-human tendency to seek out information to corroborate our preconceptions and avoid challenging or controversial views. Psychologists have a term for the process that underpins this: confirmation bias. It was this bias that my friend was attempting to overcome. But here we might wish to interject, isn’t this what the media is for?
