[Applause]
how we communicate with each other how
we interact with other people has a
profound impact on who we are on our
identity and especially so in the
digital age where the social media is so
prevalent I became aware of this
connection between how we communicate
and the identity quite accidentally
while I was doing my PhD on TV
lightweighting that is people tweeting
about a TV program while doing it I
discovered the TV light readers instead
of wanting to communicate with a large
community of people having different
sorts of opinions about the TV program
actually preferred a much smaller crowd
and not just any crowd but a crowd of
like-minded people here is what one of
my interviewees told me it’s really nice
to talk to other people about it that
feel the same way have same opinions and
like the same things so light readers
first search for please people thinking
like them and then started to follow
them on Twitter so these people then
because they could watch more easily
actually relate first of all to their
tweets and second of all because and
maybe more importantly that they could
these people were more prone to follow
them back and react to their tweets
because the ultimate fun factor of
lightweighting was and is the positive
feedback that it provides through
retweets and replies and likes I’m sure
that all those of you who are using
social
Media actively can relate to this
testimonial of another responder online
I think lightweighting is the most fun
when I get a lot of positive responses
from people so when writing my thesis
three years ago about this social
interaction when watching TV I thought
that this light readers willingness to
communicate primarily with like-minded
people was a trivial finding I gathered
that they were simply replicating their
online be offline behavior to the online
context after all in the physical world
we tend to communicate most often with
people that are close to us
our friends our relatives family members
acquaintances that tend to have the same
kinds of opinions and values than we do
and so these persons can be considered
like-minded and there are many benefits
in communicating with friends and so I
thought that this communication that
light feelers were doing was just
communication between friends and
acquaintances taking place online when
you’re communicating with a friend he or
she knows what you are appreciating he
or she is available when you need them
and especially if you’re looking for
some sort of information your friends
sort of filter away all the irrelevant
stuff now this can be a great thing if
you’re looking for a movie to watch or a
phone to buy but it can be a terrible
thing if it prevents you from enlarging
your own worldview and this just like
with this third interview among is what
I fear is taking place on all social
media platform
currently here is what she had to say I
think that’s the real interesting
question for everybody in the social
media am I just talking to myself in an
echo are we just talking to ourselves in
an echo
I fear that with with social media we
have built around ourselves individual
echo chambers echo chambers were similar
kinds of opinions resonate and echo
chambers where there is no room for
opposing views these echo chambers they
feed our vanity because they provide us
positive feedback and validation for our
opinions and the information in these
echo chambers is all the more convincing
because it tends to multiply itself
through shares and retweets the same
information bounces back and forth from
friend to friend from contact to contact
and from person to person just like an
echo does from the heart surfaces of an
echo chamber so now this echo chamber
phenomenon that I found non interesting
and trivial three years ago emerges to
me today has something that is creating
a fog between us and the opinions of
people that are outside of our immediate
environment now I want to make the
difference between this echo chamber
effect that I’m describing and the so
called filter bubble that refer to
algorithms used by virtually all and
especially large websites these
algorithms are actually prioritizing
messages that we have there are similar
to the ones that we have previously read
or light
and thus they filter away from our
social media feeds our news feeds and
even from our search results all the
messages that we do not tend to read or
like or pay attention to so for sure
these filters and algorithms sort of
thicken this fog that I’m describing but
if we as social media users act like the
participants in my study and prefer to
communicate only with like-minded people
we cannot blame solely the algorithms
for this fog in fact I think that the
deceptiveness of this echo chamber
phenomenon lies precisely in the fact
that it is self-inflicted and therefore
hard to detect especially in the hectic
life of our everyday environment but if
we take a moment if we take a step back
and think about our social media feeds I
think we can hear the echo can you hear
the echo
I definitely can and I fear that this
echo is dividing us on all sorts of
occupational orientations on all sorts
of religious beliefs and on all sorts of
political use or other interest areas
and I would even say that it is partly
to blame for the recent increase in
populism intolerance and attacks against
the democratic values of our society now
if you hear the echo you must be asking
yourself what can we do about this I
believe that we are all individually
responsible for our own echo chamber and
therefore I believe that also the
solution lies in ourselves and that the
tool that we need to fight this
phenomenon is just as ingrained in the
human nature as its vanity the tool that
I’m referring to or the characteristic
that I’m talking about is curiosity
now curiosity has led the humankind into
some of its most significant
accomplishments great things from
discovering vaccines to sending the man
in the outer space or in the face of the
moon curiosity lies deep in each of us
and although it can take intrusive form
it is generally seen as a positive force
that drives us to discover new so I
simply think that this self satisfying
social media environment where we’re
currently living in will not be able to
satisfy our curiosity in the long run
and that we will get bored with it I
think that we’re actually seeing signs
of this boredom already now some people
are closing their social media accounts
and others are sharing tips on how to
trick these algorithms by friending
people they don’t want to be friends
with or
liking pages they don’t actually like I
don’t think that we will get very far by
pretending and lying like this first of
all because it’s against our nature and
second of all because these algorithms
are really good at detecting what we’re
really interested in but maybe we could
approach this differently maybe we could
take a little different angle to this
although being aware of these algorithms
and filters and customization tools is
important I think it’ll be very hard for
us to change our communication patterns
and tools so drastically that we would
be able to avoid filtering once and for
all but maybe we could make these
algorithms work for us and maybe we
could cultivate our curiosity in smaller
parts small projects and then approach
these projects as individual learning
journeys actually this is the way that
scientific research works for instance
or journalists work or many artists work
they delve into a subject they try to
understand it and then they make their
own interpretation of it and along the
process what’s interesting is that
whether they’re artists or journalists
or researchers they end up changing
themselves because they have learned
something and that’s important now these
learning journeys need not be any overly
burdensome or ambitious all you need to
do is to pick a topic and start googling
get acquainted with people who are
knowledgeable in the in the in this area
of interest of yours or activate your
networks offline and online and soon
enough these social media algorithms
will pick up this in new interest of
yours and and help you along the way
I have had two such experiences myself
recently the first one was socially
motivated
I run a cultural center called cable
factory here in Helsinki and in the fall
of 2015 when the Syrian refugee crisis
was at its highest peak the cultural
community of cable factory wanted to
know how they could help refugees and
especially refugee artists and our
office was in charge of the project
however I realized soon that my echo
chamber was empty of refugees and and
people working with them and then we
realized that actually no one in our
team had ever met a Syrian refugee so we
needed to reach out and through our
networks we found this lady who worked
as a volunteer for an organization
helping and supporting refugees and then
in collaboration with this organization
we ended up organizing a joint art
exhibition by refugee artists and local
artists and then cooking nights where
refugees could meet members of our
community it was these personal
encounters working together cooking
together listening face to face their
survival stories that really marked us
forever I remember vividly talking to an
elderly gentleman who told me that he
had previously visited Finland many
times as a businessman and now he was
here as a refugee and had spent months
in a shelter waiting for an answer for
his asylum application I couldn’t do
much for him other than listen to his
story and express my sympathy but the
curiosity still paid off our world had
changed
well the other experience was more
personal in nature although related to a
professional project at cable factory
we’re building an extension to a current
facilities a house dedicated to dance
now my problem was that I don’t have any
background in dance I don’t know
anything about dance so I needed to get
acquainted with this form of art from
various angles well fortunately I had
people around me who were much more
knowledgeable in the field so I friended
them on Facebook and I connected with
them on LinkedIn and started to follow
them on Twitter and obviously also began
to attend dance performances and then
finally also signed up for a middle-aged
man contemporary dance class myself so
there I was with seven other middle-aged
men doing some cool moves over a weekend
well as you can see I’m still not an
expert but I can assure you that I will
never ever look at the contemporary
dance performs in the same way as I did
before and now I have the utmost respect
for the professional dancers who can
actually express themselves through
their body and sure enough dance in its
various forms is now popping up
regularly in my social media feeds so on
one side we can decide to build our
identity upon the vanity feeding echo
chamber which is a comfortable spot to
be because has this familiar thoughts
and opinions but which is dangerous
because it prevents us from
understanding people outside of our
immediate environment on the other side
we have curiosity and we can decide to
build our identity on curiosity
curiosity is demanding because it’s
relentlessly putting in question our
always
doing things on our existing theories
and habits but it’s also joyful because
it makes us learn new things and meet
new people and discover new ideas we are
all responsible for our own echo
chambers and we control our social
networks whether we are teachers or
students or researcher or artists or
journalists we control our social
networks whether they’re offline or
online let’s make sure that our
communication cultivates our curiosity
and that it will not give in to the
temptation of the echo curiosity may
have killed a cat but it may well also
save the humankind thank you
[Applause]
how we communicate with each other how
we interact with other people has a
profound impact on who we are on our
identity and especially so in the
digital age where the social media is so
prevalent I became aware of this
connection between how we communicate
and the identity quite accidentally
while I was doing my PhD on TV
lightweighting that is people tweeting
about a TV program while doing it I
discovered the TV light readers instead
of wanting to communicate with a large
community of people having different
sorts of opinions about the TV program
actually preferred a much smaller crowd
and not just any crowd but a crowd of
like-minded people here is what one of
my interviewees told me it’s really nice
to talk to other people about it that
feel the same way have same opinions and
like the same things so light readers
first search for please people thinking
like them and then started to follow
them on Twitter so these people then
because they could watch more easily
actually relate first of all to their
tweets and second of all because and
maybe more importantly that they could
these people were more prone to follow
them back and react to their tweets
because the ultimate fun factor of
lightweighting was and is the positive
feedback that it provides through
retweets and replies and likes I’m sure
that all those of you who are using
social
Media actively can relate to this
testimonial of another responder online
I think lightweighting is the most fun
when I get a lot of positive responses
from people so when writing my thesis
three years ago about this social
interaction when watching TV I thought
that this light readers willingness to
communicate primarily with like-minded
people was a trivial finding I gathered
that they were simply replicating their
online be offline behavior to the online
context after all in the physical world
we tend to communicate most often with
people that are close to us
our friends our relatives family members
acquaintances that tend to have the same
kinds of opinions and values than we do
and so these persons can be considered
like-minded and there are many benefits
in communicating with friends and so I
thought that this communication that
light feelers were doing was just
communication between friends and
acquaintances taking place online when
you’re communicating with a friend he or
she knows what you are appreciating he
or she is available when you need them
and especially if you’re looking for
some sort of information your friends
sort of filter away all the irrelevant
stuff now this can be a great thing if
you’re looking for a movie to watch or a
phone to buy but it can be a terrible
thing if it prevents you from enlarging
your own worldview and this just like
with this third interview among is what
I fear is taking place on all social
media platform
currently here is what she had to say I
think that’s the real interesting
question for everybody in the social
media am I just talking to myself in an
echo are we just talking to ourselves in
an echo
I fear that with with social media we
have built around ourselves individual
echo chambers echo chambers were similar
kinds of opinions resonate and echo
chambers where there is no room for
opposing views these echo chambers they
feed our vanity because they provide us
positive feedback and validation for our
opinions and the information in these
echo chambers is all the more convincing
because it tends to multiply itself
through shares and retweets the same
information bounces back and forth from
friend to friend from contact to contact
and from person to person just like an
echo does from the heart surfaces of an
echo chamber so now this echo chamber
phenomenon that I found non interesting
and trivial three years ago emerges to
me today has something that is creating
a fog between us and the opinions of
people that are outside of our immediate
environment now I want to make the
difference between this echo chamber
effect that I’m describing and the so
called filter bubble that refer to
algorithms used by virtually all and
especially large websites these
algorithms are actually prioritizing
messages that we have there are similar
to the ones that we have previously read
or light
and thus they filter away from our
social media feeds our news feeds and
even from our search results all the
messages that we do not tend to read or
like or pay attention to so for sure
these filters and algorithms sort of
thicken this fog that I’m describing but
if we as social media users act like the
participants in my study and prefer to
communicate only with like-minded people
we cannot blame solely the algorithms
for this fog in fact I think that the
deceptiveness of this echo chamber
phenomenon lies precisely in the fact
that it is self-inflicted and therefore
hard to detect especially in the hectic
life of our everyday environment but if
we take a moment if we take a step back
and think about our social media feeds I
think we can hear the echo can you hear
the echo
I definitely can and I fear that this
echo is dividing us on all sorts of
occupational orientations on all sorts
of religious beliefs and on all sorts of
political use or other interest areas
and I would even say that it is partly
to blame for the recent increase in
populism intolerance and attacks against
the democratic values of our society now
if you hear the echo you must be asking
yourself what can we do about this I
believe that we are all individually
responsible for our own echo chamber and
therefore I believe that also the
solution lies in ourselves and that the
tool that we need to fight this
phenomenon is just as ingrained in the
human nature as its vanity the tool that
I’m referring to or the characteristic
that I’m talking about is curiosity
now curiosity has led the humankind into
some of its most significant
accomplishments great things from
discovering vaccines to sending the man
in the outer space or in the face of the
moon curiosity lies deep in each of us
and although it can take intrusive form
it is generally seen as a positive force
that drives us to discover new so I
simply think that this self satisfying
social media environment where we’re
currently living in will not be able to
satisfy our curiosity in the long run
and that we will get bored with it I
think that we’re actually seeing signs
of this boredom already now some people
are closing their social media accounts
and others are sharing tips on how to
trick these algorithms by friending
people they don’t want to be friends
with or
liking pages they don’t actually like I
don’t think that we will get very far by
pretending and lying like this first of
all because it’s against our nature and
second of all because these algorithms
are really good at detecting what we’re
really interested in but maybe we could
approach this differently maybe we could
take a little different angle to this
although being aware of these algorithms
and filters and customization tools is
important I think it’ll be very hard for
us to change our communication patterns
and tools so drastically that we would
be able to avoid filtering once and for
all but maybe we could make these
algorithms work for us and maybe we
could cultivate our curiosity in smaller
parts small projects and then approach
these projects as individual learning
journeys actually this is the way that
scientific research works for instance
or journalists work or many artists work
they delve into a subject they try to
understand it and then they make their
own interpretation of it and along the
process what’s interesting is that
whether they’re artists or journalists
or researchers they end up changing
themselves because they have learned
something and that’s important now these
learning journeys need not be any overly
burdensome or ambitious all you need to
do is to pick a topic and start googling
get acquainted with people who are
knowledgeable in the in the in this area
of interest of yours or activate your
networks offline and online and soon
enough these social media algorithms
will pick up this in new interest of
yours and and help you along the way
I have had two such experiences myself
recently the first one was socially
motivated
I run a cultural center called cable
factory here in Helsinki and in the fall
of 2015 when the Syrian refugee crisis
was at its highest peak the cultural
community of cable factory wanted to
know how they could help refugees and
especially refugee artists and our
office was in charge of the project
however I realized soon that my echo
chamber was empty of refugees and and
people working with them and then we
realized that actually no one in our
team had ever met a Syrian refugee so we
needed to reach out and through our
networks we found this lady who worked
as a volunteer for an organization
helping and supporting refugees and then
in collaboration with this organization
we ended up organizing a joint art
exhibition by refugee artists and local
artists and then cooking nights where
refugees could meet members of our
community it was these personal
encounters working together cooking
together listening face to face their
survival stories that really marked us
forever I remember vividly talking to an
elderly gentleman who told me that he
had previously visited Finland many
times as a businessman and now he was
here as a refugee and had spent months
in a shelter waiting for an answer for
his asylum application I couldn’t do
much for him other than listen to his
story and express my sympathy but the
curiosity still paid off our world had
changed
well the other experience was more
personal in nature although related to a
professional project at cable factory
we’re building an extension to a current
facilities a house dedicated to dance
now my problem was that I don’t have any
background in dance I don’t know
anything about dance so I needed to get
acquainted with this form of art from
various angles well fortunately I had
people around me who were much more
knowledgeable in the field so I friended
them on Facebook and I connected with
them on LinkedIn and started to follow
them on Twitter and obviously also began
to attend dance performances and then
finally also signed up for a middle-aged
man contemporary dance class myself so
there I was with seven other middle-aged
men doing some cool moves over a weekend
well as you can see I’m still not an
expert but I can assure you that I will
never ever look at the contemporary
dance performs in the same way as I did
before and now I have the utmost respect
for the professional dancers who can
actually express themselves through
their body and sure enough dance in its
various forms is now popping up
regularly in my social media feeds so on
one side we can decide to build our
identity upon the vanity feeding echo
chamber which is a comfortable spot to
be because has this familiar thoughts
and opinions but which is dangerous
because it prevents us from
understanding people outside of our
immediate environment on the other side
we have curiosity and we can decide to
build our identity on curiosity
curiosity is demanding because it’s
relentlessly putting in question our
always
doing things on our existing theories
and habits but it’s also joyful because
it makes us learn new things and meet
new people and discover new ideas we are
all responsible for our own echo
chambers and we control our social
networks whether we are teachers or
students or researcher or artists or
journalists we control our social
networks whether they’re offline or
online let’s make sure that our
communication cultivates our curiosity
and that it will not give in to the
temptation of the echo curiosity may
have killed a cat but it may well also
save the humankind thank you
[Applause]
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