Navigating "Filter Bubbles" in Education


This concept of the filter bubble is fascinating as it pertains to the news (and how Eli Pariser relates it to news in 1915) and how it is catered to our own content desires. This TED Talk video came out in 2011, which goes to show just how long that this data-mining process has been going on through websites like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and anything else. It is one thing to open YouTube these days and have it catered to my interests of seeing a FIFA video of 11 Ronaldo's versus 11 Messi's, but it is another to have any click I make be data logged and have it affect my browsing. However, there are certain limitations on my browsing that I can choose myself: I can unfollow and block people on Facebook and Twitter, and on Twitter I can even block certain words from showing up in my newsfeed. This can, however, be surpassed by advertising that is catered to you individually through your browsing history. This is in conjunction with  the total control that is exerted on browsing by the corporate elites like Google, Facebook, etc.

Now, we as prospective future educators could play a role similar to that of the media elites in filtering content for our students, especially in the field of English. English is more than just grammar and spelling; it is themes, motifs, and developmental ideas that can be representative of cultures, times, and places when/where works were written. If we filter this content when we are teaching it, it does not give students an accurate or fair representation of the media that they are consuming.

Growing up in as small of a town as I did, I am sure that many of my teachers & superiors filtered much of the content that we consumed in order to keep the conservative ideology of the town in place. This may even have more to do with the selection of content itself; in many of my English classes the novels we all read were American and by white male authors. In hindsight, this is an extremely limited scope of literature, and this is certainly one way that our consumption had been filtered.

That leaves it up to us to not filter our content that we teach to our students. We need to include literature from many different parts of the world and many different walks of life to ensure that we can paint a greater and more representative picture of the world around us during our brief time with our students, and not just one that is catered to their beliefs of what the world "should" be. Until we can eliminate these filter bubbles, it will be tougher for progress to be made, but it is on us to be part of that change.

Comments

  1. Ryan McCallumAugust 6, 2018 at 10:32 AM

    You write, "we as prospective future educators could play a role similar to that of the media elites in filtering content for our students." This is so important to keep in mind and I'm glad you brought it up. We are gatekeepers in a huge way. Even if we try to keep our own biases out of our teaching, it can't help but emerge in the literature we select, the voices we amplify, and the topics we focus on. the only way to get past this is by being open, skeptical, and humble enough to continually question what we do. Are we brave enough to critically examine our own ideas in a world that can give us instant validation? Are we strong enough to surround ourselves with voices that challenge us?

    I agree with you that "We need to include literature from many different parts of the world and many different walks of life to ensure that we can paint a greater and more representative picture of the world around us during our brief time with our students". We need to develop networks that continually expose us to these new ideas and voices so that we can offer them to our students.

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