Title: Filtre bubbles and facebook pages about climate crisis Author: Mgr. Kateřina Janovská Institute: Institute of Information Studies and Librarianship Supervisor: Mgr. Josef Šlerka, Ph.D. Abstract: The climate crisis is one of the biggest challenges society is facing today. And while its existence is subject to scientific consensus, it is a highly polarising issue among the public. The social network Facebook, which has become a platform for spreading misinformation and filter bubbles, has also played its part. This thesis analyses the potential risk of filter bubbles being created on Facebook pages that address the topic of climate change - with a focus on similar pages suggestions. It categorizes these pages according to their stance on the existence of anthropocentric climate change.

Through discontinuous growth and its use in multiple sectors the podcasting established itself as a medium to be reckoned with in the future. Recently, the mainstream scene of French podcasting has seen, among its usual professionally produced shows, the presence of a few podcasts involving a clear and subjective message of activism. These manifestations, although a minority in the head of the charts, are only the visible part of a phenomenon made possible by the “long-tail” dimension of this medium. Indeed, although overwhelmed by the multitude of shows forming this tail, various activist circles have been able to take advantage of the myriad of useful qualities that this medium affords by creating their own programs. With the aim of grasping the interest shown by French activists in podcasting, this thesis was supported by the interviews of two French citizens working for progress through podcasting. The findings of these discussions were backed by active listening to the episodes produced and hosted by these participants and by three auto-ethnographic vignettes tracing the various stages of the creation of a podcasting show by the author of this work. The analysis of these results has been treated under the lenses of adequate theories to demonstrate that activists have a practical relationship with podcasting allowing them to reach their community active offline through participatory and independent episodes

Denna studie undersöker hur individer och grupper uttrycker sina åsikter om klimatförändringar i svenska nyhetsmedier och om det finns echo-chambers i klimatdiskursen. I studien användes en kritisk diskursanalys för att undersöka ett riktat urval av 13 nyhetsartiklar från svenska tidningar. Artiklarna analyserades för att förstå hur argument om klimatförändringar konstrueras, vilka argument som används för att stödja olika narrativ och hur svensk media kan påverka medborgarnas åsikter och uppfattningar om klimatförändringar. Analysen avslöjade två distinkta echo-chambers inom diskursen. Den första echo-chambern ramar in klimatförändringarna som en brådskande fråga relaterad till politisk inkompetens, globala företag och banker. Denna echo-chamber beskriver ofta ett domedagsperspektiv, vilket kan ge läsarna en känsla av hjälplöshet eller förnekelse. En andra echo-chamber visar skepsis mot antagandet att klimatförändringarna är ett resultat av antropogen verksamhet. Skepticismen grundar sig på förnekelse, brist på kunskap och politiska ideologier, vilket har hindrat ansträngningarna att ta itu med klimatförändringars effekter. Misstron mot informationskällor, inklusive media och vetenskapliga organisationer, påverkar denna grupps uppfattningar, vilket leder till skepticism mot de vetenskapliga bevisen för klimatförändringarna. Studien belyser de positiva och negativa effekterna av echo-chambers i diskurser kring komplexa ämnen, dessa understryker vikten av att bedöma tillförlitliga informationskällor (i), aktivt söka nya perspektiv (ii) och främja öppna, respektfulla dialoger för att minska polariseringen och för att effektivt ta itu med klimatkrisen (iii). Studien lyfter fram den avgörande roll som kollektiva åtgärder och kritiskt tänkande spelar för att lösa klimatkrisen, samtidigt som man erkänner de utmaningar som är förknippade med lösningarna. Vidare utforskar studien potentialen i konceptet The power of ten och mediernas roll som uppmuntrar proaktiv och konstruktiv informationsdelning. / This thesis examines how individuals and groups express their views on climate change in Swedish news media and whether there are echo chambers in the climate discourse. The study used a critical discourse analysis to examine a targeted sample of 13 news articles from Swedish newspapers. The articles were analysed to understand how arguments about climate change are constructed, which arguments are used to support different narratives, and how Swedish media coverage can influence citizens opinions and perceptions about climate change.The analysis revealed two distinct echo chambers in the discourse. The first echo-chamber framed climate change as an urgent matter related to political incompetence, global corporations, and banks. This echo-chamber often described a doomsday perspective, which can leave readers with feelings of helplessness or denial. The second echo-chamber showed scepticism towards the assumption that climate change is a result of anthropogenic activities. The scepticism is based on denial, lack of knowledge, and political ideologies, which hindered efforts to address the impacts of climate change. Mistrust in information sources, including the media and scientific organizations, influence this group's perceptions, leading to scepticism towards the scientific evidence of climate change. This study highlights the positive and negative effects of echo chambers in discourses around complex topics, these underlines the importance of assessing reliable information sources (i), actively seeking new perspectives (ii), and promoting open, respectful dialogues to reduce polarization and to effectively address the climate crisis (iii). The study highlights the crucial role that collective action and critical thinking play in solving the climate crisis, while recog-nizing the challenges associated with the solutions. Furthermore, the study explores the poten-tial of The power of ten concept and the role of the media encouraging proactive and con-structive information sharing.

På senare år har filterbubblor blivit ett välkänt begrepp som syftar på de bubblor av innehåll som användare slängs in i på sociala medier. I dessa bubblor finns en oro för att inlägg är ensidiga och kan stänga in oss i bland annat politiska åsikter. Filterbubblor anses därför av många bidra till en ökad polarisering, inte bara på grund av de inlägg som faktiskt visas för oss, utan även de inlägg som algoritmen väljer att inte visa på vårt nyhetsflöde. Trots att medvetenheten kring filterbubblor ökat, finns inte många studier på hur vägen mot en filterbubbla ser ut. För det första förser vi i denna rapport genom ett kvantitativt experiment, användare av sociala plattformar med en tydligare bild av hur filterbubblans livscykel ser ut, det vill säga hur lång tid det tar att hamna i en filterbubbla, och hur användare kan ta sig ur den. För det andra testar vi de teorier och de metodologiska svårigheterna i tidigare forskning kring hur användare potentiellt kan ta sig ur, eller byta filterbubbla. Vårt resultat visar att det går snabbt att komma in i en filterbubbla, medans att ta sig ur filterbubblan eller byta filterbubbla visa sig vara svårare än vad vi trodde och därför kräver mer tid. Eftersom det inte finns tidigare forskning på hur en filterbubbla ser ut eller när man kan räkna det som en filterbubbla så har vi  utifrån vårt egna experiments resultat, skapat ett mått för just detta. / In recent years, filter bubbles have become a well-known concept that refers to the bubbles of content that users throw in on social media. In these bubbles there is a concern that posting is one-sided and can shut us down in, among other things, political opinions. Filter bubbles are therefore considered by many to contribute to increased polarization, not only because of the posts that are actually displayed to us, but also the posts that the algorithm chooses not to display on our news feed. Although awareness of filter bubbles has increased, there are not many studies on what the path to a filter bubble looks like. Firstly, in a quantitative experiment, we provide users of social platforms with a clearer picture of what the filter bubble's life cycle looks like, i.e. how long it takes to end up in a filter bubble, and how users can get out of it. Secondly, we test the theories and methodological difficulties in previous research on how users can potentially get out, or change the filter bubble. Our results show that it is easy to get into a filter bubble, but getting out of the filter bubble or changing the filter bubble turns out to be more difficult than we thought and requires more time. Since there is no previous research on what a filter bubble looks like or when you can count it as a filter bubble we have based on the results of our own experiment created a measure for just this.

Technological advancements and affordability enable voicing of social injustice, feelings of deprivation, and oppression. Spatial barriers no longer pose obstacles to connecting with like-minded (or dissimilar) others to define and refine ingroup and outgroup. Some scholars anticipate that the internet liberates the discussion of opinions, others claim social networking platforms play a role in the polarisation of the public by creating echo chambers. However, it is recognised that ideas, ideologies, and social movements spread across the internet at an unprecedented pace. Connecting with others with whom one shares deprivation in a support network offers a sense of belonging. Broad scholarly literature addresses opinion polarisation and potential radicalisation in online social media platforms. However, quantifying radicalisation trajectories in fringe online communities like the misogynist incels are still to be done. In this thesis I study the online presence of the incel community. Incels are mostly young men who feel stigmatised and need to hide their incel existence. Incels voice their feelings of deprivation of a relationship and sex with a willing partner. This unfulfilled masculinity and sense of entitlement to sex cause frustration and anger which are vented in online forums blaming primarily women and feminism. Calls for action to social change, even for violence is common. However, incels do not unanimously consider violence a solution, many demonstrate the tame side of the so-called blackpilled mindset, the acceptance of powerlessness, and nihilism. Regardless, some scholars view the community as potentially dangerous to society, labelling them as terrorists. This study investigates whether participating registered users of the Incels.is website display increasing tendency toward expressing utterances with the themes of misogyny, harassment, nihilism, and moral outrage in their posted messages, and whether users gradually become more aligned with the general perception of incels in previous scholarly work. In other words, this work tests whether active participation increases the frequency of utterances of misogyny, harassment, and moral outrage, thus demonstrating a radicalisation tendency or increased nihilism. To answer the research question, I first scraped the Incels.is website, and retained ~5.38M posts published over 4 years for analysis. Next, a subset of posts was manually labelled to train a supervised text classification model (BERT). Finally, the results of the classification task were complemented with Ordinary Least Squares regression (n = 4623). The analyses uncover temporal user-level radicalisation trajectories, and increased nihilism. More specifically, the duration of active participation (in days) and the number of posted messages positively predict the count of moral outrage, misogynistic, harassing, and nihilistic content.