Blog 6: Comment on Emily's Post About Filter Bubbles

     Emily, I agree with your critique about Eli Pariser's TED talk. Filter bubbles are not allowing Internet users to be exposed to a large variety of opinions and perspectives. There is a plethora of political news articles available to users across the country, but the "algorithm" that you mentioned prevents citizens from learning new perspectives about politics. If some citizens in communities don't have the personal resources to learn about our United States government through family or community, the Internet may be their only resource of political knowledge. If the search engines of Internet sites eliminate political news from articles and editorials that have all different political ideologies, then they may not retrieve the knowledge they need to formulate their own opinions about public policy and other social issues. As a result, citizens do not have enough political knowledge to vote and become politically engaged.
            In regard to your discussion about Pariser's opinions, I thought the topics you covered were relevant to the video and very concise. You provided pros and cons to the recent addition of filter bubbles. You discussed the positive of filter bubbles, in which they provide "news based off of your Internet data." But contrasted this view by elaborating on the lack of "contradicting viewpoints" and a loss of "sense of mainstream media." Most importantly, I was able to grasp a good idea of the issues of filter bubbles, and how, as a citizen, I can look for more contradicting opinions other than what is in my own "filter bubble."