The Paradox of Information Access: Growing Isolation in the Age of Sharing

Modern online media, such as Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, enable anyone to become an information producer and to offer online content for potentially global consumption. By increasing the amount of globally accessible real-time information, today's ubiquitous producers contribute to a world, where an individual consumes vanishingly smaller fractions of all produced content. In general, consumers preferentially select information that closely matches their individual views and values. The bias inherent in such selection is further magnified by today's information curation services that maximize user engagement (and thus service revenue) by filtering new content in accordance with observed consumer preferences. Consequently, individuals get exposed to increasingly narrower bands of the ideology spectrum. Societies get fragmented into increasingly ideologically isolated enclaves. These enclaves (or echo-chambers) then become vulnerable to misinformation spread, which in turn further magnifies polarization and bias. We call this dynamic the paradox of information access; a growing ideological fragmentation in the age of sharing. This article describes the technical, economic, and socio-cognitive contributors to this paradox, and explores research directions towards its mitigation.