The Occurrence of Confirmation Bias on Facebook

Recently, a research conducted by Quattrociocchi, Scala and Sunstein indicated that interviewees have distinctive meanings in those functions of "Like", "Comments" and "Share". The function of "Like" and that of "Share" showed the users' positive feedback and intention to increase the visibility toward a post, whereas the button of "Comments" was more likely to contribute the online debate, either positive or negative, on a particular post. Moreover, Facebook users are highly polarized on their intended side. During the experiment, the result reflected that users not merely showed a strong tendency to seek out and receive their preferred information in order to strengthen their preferred thoughts and idea, but also they would intentionally reject the information that undermine their belief. Therefore, it is possible to pay more attention in the coming future to recognize how the confirmation bias is occurred on the digital platform because the online media will constructively reinforce the polarization of the community in the current century. For example, a lot of pro-democratic supports would show a strong intention to reject, ignore or even block the side from the side which provides unconditionally support to the government or the Central Government and vice visa.

Reference: Quattrociocchi, W., Scala, A., & Sunstein, C. R. (2016). Echo chambers on facebook.