Confirmation Bias Research Paper

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By only focusing on what is happening in one’s immediate world and falling back onto focusing on those who reaffirm one’s beliefs, a confirmation bias is created making it simple to fall into a social media niche. Via social media, there are two ways to reach many people, write something incendiary and receive an influx of hate/support, or keep to non-political issues and focus on noncontroversial items. Social media are an overall distraction from important problems.

The manipulation of the media can be entertaining, such as satirical sites like the Onion. But when other websites are less well-known, it can cause confusion and spread ignorance. After the Brangelina split, my friend shared an article on Facebook. The article featured on the
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Twitter is very limited in that one can only post 140 characters per individual tweet. Twitter also makes it effortless for one to become lost in confirmation bias. While one will probably follow people that they know personally, it seems natural to start following a pro-feminism account or an anti-feminism account depending on one’s views. Once a person starts polarizing their accounts in one direction, they become vulnerable to the rhetoric of set beliefs only. This is damaging as they may not understand the full story of an incident like Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand during the national anthem. People may be initially outraged by his antipatriotic move and fail to listen to the reason behind it or believe his cause is not large enough to necessitate sitting during the anthem. As opposed to understanding that he, as quoted in an article on the NFL’s website, wouldn’t “‘stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,’” (Wyche). By failing to understand his reason or only receiving news from sources condemning him for his position, one would fail to understand the important issue Kaepernick was

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