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Late Night Woman's Hour

27/01/2017

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Are we all living in bubbles these days? And if we are, how easy is it to break out?

Lauren Laverne challenges conservative commentator Laura Perrins and Labour MP Tulip Siddiq to swap social media and news feeds for 48 hours.

Are we all living in bubbles these days? Lauren Laverne challenges conservative commentator Laura Perrins and Labour MP Tulip Siddiq to swap social media and news feeds for forty-eight hours to find out.

"If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the internet", Barack Obama recently advised Americans, "try talking with one of them in real life." The outgoing US President was expressing an idea that's gained growing weight with commentators and politics watchers on both sides of the Atlantic: increasingly, we all exist in 'bubbles' that shield us from ideas and truths other sections of the population hold dear. The recent US elections, and the Brexit vote, both seem to suggest that common political ground is shrinking. How much do our online lives contribute to that sense of alienation?

Eli Pariser explained in his 2011 book The Filter Bubble how social media sites and search engines use algorithms to give us more of what we like to click on, increasingly confining us in an echo chamber of our 'likes' and 'follows', and shutting out alternative views. Charles Murray's book Coming Apart featured a quiz entitled "How Thick Is Your Bubble?", designed to reveal how a subject's work, class and cultural tastes might cut them off from mainstream society. 

So what can we learn about the bubbles we may live in by putting aside our own online life for a day or two, and embracing someone else's?

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