A common criticism of social media is that groups of people are creating echo chambers that exclude different perspectives, but these echo chambers are a goal encoded in these platforms’ software, not an accident.   

Wendy Chun FBA unpacks the role of homophily – the idea that similarity breeds connection, that ‘birds of a feather flock together’ – in how social media networks are designed. What can at first appear as simple technical defaults are the result of social and culturally influenced decisions. What if we built social media platforms that are not based on homophily?  

Speaker: Professor Wendy Chun FBA 

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