ChamberBreaker

Inspiration

What is echo chamber? Echo chamber is “a hollow enclosure used to produce reverberations”.

And what is echo chamber on social media? People tends to encounter information which reinforces their existing opinions, so one’s opinion will be amplified and potentially form an unconscious bias. When it lies in the political area, it will lead to social polarization and extremism. For examples, one study by MIT media lab shows that in 2016 US President election, there is a strong polarization on Twitter between two sides.

Not only Twitter, on Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, more and more echo chamber problems. We choose to study Reddit first. Because on Reddit, the problem is more serious. As a user, you browse all hot posts, top comments, your opinions are reinforced, and you are trapped in the chamber.

So what could we do? We come up with the chamberBreaker. Instead of justing browsing majority people’s opinions in SubReddits. can we provide users some diverse opinions? And fresh topics?

Here is our the design.