confirmation bias
I’ve created a page with my del.icio.us tag cloud if anyone wants to check it out. I don’t really like being such a whore for Yahoo, which owns the service, but I find its social bookmarking an incredibly useful tool. Not only is it great for retrieving links, but I find things like the tag cloud revealing about my own interests. One would think you’re conciously aware of your interests, but looking at the tag cloud has revealed that I’m more interested in policy issues and history than I would ordinarily admit to myself.
Of course, this crowdsourcing of the self has some limitations. One limitation is that my bookmarks emphasize information that’s already common on the Web. For example, I have many more pages related to business than anarchism, partly because there’s more informatin available online on business issues than anarchist thought. This does not mean, however, that I’m more interested in neoliberal economics than anarchism. Some Web observers like Cass Sunstein argue that the Web serves as an “echo chamber” where users prefer to read material that reflect their own biases. Later empirical research has suggested that this is not the case, users are often aware of opposing points of view. But, what I’m noticing is that I’m reinforcing my own interests through the web, while being nudged in directions based on others’ posts. I suppose that’s obvious, but it’s worth noting.
