Echo chamber: a quiz

[sam]

Escape the echo chamber – C Thi Nguyen
An ‘epistemic bubble’ is an informational network from which relevant voices have been excluded by omission. That omission might be purposeful: we might be selectively avoiding contact with contrary views because, say, they make us uncomfortable. As social scientists tell us, we like to engage in selective exposure, seeking out information that confirms our own worldview. But that omission can also be entirely inadvertent. Even if we’re not actively trying to avoid disagreement, our Facebook friends tend to share our views and interests. When we take networks built for social reasons and start using them as our information feeds, we tend to miss out on contrary views and run into exaggerated degrees of agreement.

An ‘echo chamber’ is a social structure from which other relevant voices have been actively discredited. Where an epistemic bubble merely omits contrary views, an echo chamber brings its members to actively distrust outsiders. In their book Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (2010), Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Frank Cappella offer a groundbreaking analysis of the phenomenon. For them, an echo chamber is something like a cult. A cult isolates its members by actively alienating them from any outside sources. Those outside are actively labelled as malignant and untrustworthy. A cult member’s trust is narrowed, aimed with laser-like focus on certain insider voices.


• Cycling UK
• CycleChat
• YACF
• Mumsnet

NACF

TWAM   TWAM   TWAM   TWAM   TWAM

"Trans women are men" is a phrase often associated with Magdalen Berns, so I did a search using both. Lo and behold this popped up fairly early:



Given that one's searches are biased – apparently even in private mode – it shouldn't be such a shocker, but I was still surprised, as my assumption is that we're too far off the beaten track for Google to find us before 700 pages or so.

The sharp-eyed will note from the colour of visited links that I haven't clicked on the ContraPoints one! Don't worry, I've watched my share of those.

[close]

Which is which?

I got to thinking about echo chambers after reading this at the coven:

Not that this is even a trans issue but…

I think this forum is indeed a bit of an "anti trans activism" echo chamber, but it's not like it's the fault of the members. As far as I know, this place allows open discussion and both sides can make their case.

The problem for the trans activist side, is that they can't just come here and throw insults and make threats, because the forum is moderated for that. And maybe their ideas often can't stand up to scrutiny so they don't like being on a forum for the purposes of debate.

So I'm thinking that their own online spaces are "echo chambers" because they censor the fuck out of them and don't allow dissent. If this place is also a bit of an echo chamber, it's because trans-activism can't survive that well in the light of open debate.

But maybe I'm wrong. Does anyone know forums on the trans activism side that don't censor discussion?

Good question.

This combination of McCarthyism and the Salem witch trials has led to the great free speech battle of our time.

The only reason it seems like this board is disproportionately interested in trans issues is because Mumsnet made a special board for discussions about where trans rights conflict with women’s sex based rights!

They shunt all the vaguely related topics over here (aka The Naughty Step) and as Mumsnetters often use different user names for different boards there is no way for observers to get a rounded picture.

But no, I don’t know where anyone could have a truly balanced debate because whilst many of us want to talk in depth and follow all the rabbit holes the transextremists just claim that even the gentlest questions from terves are literally genociding trans folx and thus we have to either Beeee Kiiiiiind or risk death by grease fire...

If someone wants more dissenting opinions on the Sex and Gender board they need to get on and post those dissenting opinions and ‘be the change they want to see’.

See also R-E-S-P-E-C-T