Earlier in this module, we saw a couple of videos that mentioned filter bubbles (when information is tailored based on your past searches and demonstrated preferences). In his TED Talk, Eli Pariser showed us that what we click on in Facebook, Google, and other places influences what types of information we see in the future. Now let's look at a resource that can help us hone our critical thinking skills so we can be more informed researchers.

Blue Feed, Red Feed

The Wall Street Journal newspaper created a web site to show the difference between liberal Facebook posts and conservative ones. The web site is Blue Feed, Red Feed. To use this site, it helps to know that the color blue is associated with liberal policies and people, and the color red is associated with conservative policies and people. This is how they describe their web site:

"To demonstrate how reality may differ for different Facebook users, The Wall Street Journal created two feeds, one “blue” and the other “red.” If a source appears in the red feed, a majority of the articles shared from the source were classified as “very conservatively aligned” in a large 2015 Facebook study. For the blue feed, a majority of each source’s articles aligned “very liberal.” These aren't intended to resemble actual individual news feeds. Instead, they are rare side-by-side looks at real conversations from different perspectives" (Blue Feed, Red Feed).

On this site, we can choose a topic at the bottom of the page to see how that topic might be portrayed on a liberal/blue feed or conservative/red feed Facebook page. Although we all might be getting information on a particular topic, such as the immigration debate, the images and language used in a liberal/blue feed Facebook post will likely be very different from the images and language used in a conservative/red feed Facebook post.