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“Content bubbles are dangerous things. They intensify polarization and impair our ability to have constructive conversations about important issues. ”
In this episode, I speak with entrepreneur and former NASA engineer, Harleen Kaur. Harleen is the founder of Ground News, a news platform that helps combat media bias by allowing people to compare how different news outlets from across the political spectrum are covering the same story. Ground News is currently the world’s biggest news aggregator, with 50,000 news sources and counting.
I wanted to speak with Harleen because the topic of news intersects nicely with other topics I write about here, like confirmation bias and values. Also, I’ve been using Ground News for the past few months to give me a more well-rounded perspective on current events and I’ve found a lot of value in it.
Topics covered
Why we seem to be becoming increasingly polarized and what we can do about it
Why online content bubbles are a dangerous thing and the tyranny of algorithms
Different types of media biases and how to counteract them
How we can consume news in a more sustainable manner
How our values inform our the news we choose to pay attention to
Notable quotes from Harleen
When everyone can be their own publishing platform, how do we decide what’s trustworthy and what’s not? Especially with the advent of social media—just because something gets a lot of like or shares, do you believe that story? What are the factors that make a story verified or not? These are the kinds of questions I’m trying to address with Ground News.
What we can do as individuals is inform ourselves of different opinions and the only way we can do that is by being exposed to viewpoints we might not agree with.
What we do at Ground News is take a single story and show you all the diverse narratives about it.
There is inherent bias in us as human beings and there is inherent bias in media sources.
Media companies have realized that in order to survive, they cannot speak to everybody. So they pick a subset of their audience, speak to them well, and keep reinforcing their points.
Content bubbles today are what parental political opinions were 10 years ago: They are absolutely integral in shaping someone’s worldview and once formed, they are very difficult to burst.
Content bubbles are dangerous things. They intensify polarization and impair our ability to have constructive conversations about important issues.
Content bubbles only serve to reinforce strongly held convictions. When people don’t have access to opposing views, they struggle to understand the perspectives of others and eventually become isolated.
Selected links & resources
The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt
Antifragility by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Ruben Chavez is a writer and host of The Think Grow Podcast.
The internet makes it easy to live inside our own little content bubbles where we are protected from any viewpoints other than those with which we already agree. But this is a big problem. When we aren't exposed to opposing perspectives, we don’t learn how to relate to the people who hold them. I’ve put together a short list of tips for engaging with people who hold views contrary to your own.