The Guardian | Social Algorithms | Podcast | 16.05.2015

Facebook and the rise of social algorithms – podcast

The Guardian, Science Week, 16.05.2015

A recent study by Facebook’s in-house research team investigated whether the social network’s news feed was helping keep people in political bubbles, by selectively serving up news designed to match their own views, while filtering out content from opposite political camps.

This personalised view of the internet, provided by social algorithms that guess what you’d like to see, is known as the filter bubble. And these filters can relate to politics, news, the products you are sold and even the prices you pay for them.

Joining Hannah Devlin to discuss the impact of these social algorithms are David Lazer, Professor of Political Science and Computer Science at Northeastern University; Professor Vincent Hendricks, Director of the Centre of Information and Bubble Studies at the University of Copenhagen and the Guardian’s science editor, Ian Sample.

Listen to the podcast here