Jiyoon Ahn Editor Akachi Emighara SOCI 314 4 5 2019 Filter Bubble Remediation A Reflection of the Influences Surrounding Us Everybody sees the world through their own seeing lenses not just rose tinted but a plethora of different shades and nuances Our ideologies and beliefs are not only ours but imprints of influences from all parts of our lives that socialize us into specified cultures Filter bubbles are mainly responsible for an individual s bias and create gaps of understanding between interactions with others They separate us but don t necessarily have to My own personal filter bubble is influenced culturally between peers within social organizations academic and economic class as well as my academic institutions My parents did not have much of a political view but I gained my filter bubble through the peers I grew up with Living in Houston school was always a melting pot of culture Our high school had a 79 minority rate with 44 Hispanic 20 Black 21 White and 13 Asian Rankings Despite this there was a severe economic disparity between members of the school and it showed within the way ethnicities interacted at the school Fortunately I was able to enjoy the company of many other ethnicities but only because I was in a multitude of clubs at the time Academically it was almost segregated for lack of better words Bellaire had a sweeping change of demographics from whites to immigrants within nearby apartment complexes in the attendance zone To keep the whites attending Bellaire the high school added IB programs that created a dichotomy of privilege between students On one side there was a class with conservative children of the elite and solid upbringing while a couple classrooms away there was a class that had extremely lower standards for both students and teacher alike usually consisting of minorities A research study conducted by Richard Alba et al concluded that educational policy protects the advantages of native students through intervention by the parents of these students when the advantages are threatened Alba et al 2011 Students in AP IB programs would rarely take a regular class and it was often looked down upon creating a larger split between the two groups The divide between privileged and the under privileged has increased and the conservative population had also decreased significantly by the time I had attended The minority population was majority liberal and democratic while the white population was mostly Jewish an ethnicity with twice as many self identified liberals than conservatives The IB AP programs now had an unbalanced mix of majority left leaning with minority right leaning political ideologies This allowed for more open conversation with liberal political views while the conservative students bit their tongue in fear of being ridiculed Many students were empowered with this democratic filter bubble and participated in rallies and protests while others would be increasingly outspoken on social media Upon revisiting this memory I had to include that despite having a majority of liberal thought in the IB AP programs there was a slight racism within the intersection of active liberals Hernandez 2019 Black students were under spoken for within this sphere of political conversation and participation because only a handful attended the IB AP programs Most of the black students in the area were heavily underprivileged making it harder for them to perform well in an academic setting Jiyoon Ahn Editor Akachi Emighara SOCI 314 4 5 2019 I had attended Bellaire s AP program for 4 years slowly inheriting liberal viewpoints through social media reposts of clips on Facebook and Tumblr consisting of many shows with a democratic influence Being part of the dance club also influenced me to listened to hip hop and rap music where the artists are mostly minorities and more often than not hold strong democratic opinions I scorned news networks like FOX NEWS for being ridiculously bias while I continued to consume media from equally biased networks in my filter bubble such as CNN Before I did not realize that both of these networks are similar in that they were inspired by sports networks in the way that they dramatize news and focus more on entertainment than original reporting Vox 2017 The two main social media platforms I frequented in my developing years Tumblr and Facebook funneled my news and entertainment exposure to similarly liberal shows like The Daily Show and Buzzfeed through algorithms that feed you content based on previous content you liked Amanpour TED 2017 According to a study done at Fairleigh Dickinson University the news that I consumed had a negative impact on my current event knowledge Cassino et al 2012 In this study approximately one thousand respondents were asked for their news consumption preferences and to answer 9 questions about political affairs The results showed that Fox News CNN and MSNBC were the least informative media sources with Fox and MSNBC scoring worse than consuming no news media at all When I graduated and began to attend Texas A M I was exposed to both the good and the bad of republican s conservative views I was first exposed to extremely radical conservative personalities such as brother Jeb and other speakers at A M Brother Jeb is someone everybody on A M campus knows and polarizes people I was a victim as well within his sphere of attention that can be detrimental to A Ms social groups This polarization happens through unintentional fear mongering whether that be fear towards radical conservatives like Jeb or fear of people who go against Jeb s spoken values Hernandez 2019 Interactions such as this increase the gap between filter bubbles of people who are from other worlds metaphorically because they become more afraid of the opposite ideology instead of accepting it as a valid opinion Once this happens it is hard to stop individuals from surrounding themselves with likeminded individuals and agreeable media as well Hernandez Tribalism Jiyoon Ahn Editor Akachi Emighara SOCI 314 4 5 2019 A collection of American politicians I created while watching a pleasant evening of political discussion Observe all the Democrats and Republicans getting along Thankfully the socialization of being a member of Texas A M in word and action came smoothly regardless of these interactions thanks to the acceptable nature of A M students for the most part I quickly proceeded to meet well educated peers who could convey their political ideology