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INTRODUCTION
Something seems to have gone wrong with the flow of information. Recent analyses of Facebook feeds and Twitter networks reveal that their user's informational input is being radically filtered, that users are being exposed largely to arguments and views with which they already agree (Saez-Trumper et al. 2013; An et al. 2014). What's more, whole segments of the population have dismissed the mainstream media as corrupt and untrustworthy. Many of us have started to wonder: are we trapped in echo chambers of our own making?1
The recent conversation, however, has blurred two distinct, but interrelated, social epistemic phenomena, which I will call epistemic bubbles and echo chambers. Both are problematic social structures that lead their members astray. Both reinforce ideological separation. But they are different in their origins, mechanisms for operation, and avenues for treatment. Both are structures of exclusion – but epistemic bubbles exclude through omission, while echo chambers exclude by manipulating trust and credence. However, the modern conversation often fails to distinguish between them.
Loosely, an epistemic bubble is a social epistemic structure in which some relevant voices have been excluded through omission. Epistemic bubbles can form with no ill intent, through ordinary processes of social selection and community formation. We seek to stay in touch with our friends, who also tend to have similar political views. But when we also use those same social networks as sources of news, then we impose on ourselves a narrowed and self-reinforcing epistemic filter, which leaves out contrary views and illegitimately inflates our epistemic self-confidence.
An echo chamber, on the other hand, is a social epistemic structure in which other relevant voices have been actively discredited. My analysis builds on Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Frank Capella's work, with some philosophical augmentation. According to Jamieson and Capella, an echo chamber's members share beliefs which include reasons to distrust those outside the echo chamber. Echo chambers work by systematically isolating their members from all outside epistemic sources (Jamieson and Cappella 2008: 163–236). This mechanism bears a striking resemblance to some accounts of cult indoctrination. By discrediting outsiders, echo chambers leave their members overly dependent on approved inside sources for information. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are merely not heard; in echo chambers,...