Policy Chats John Gable: Filter Bubbles, Media Bias, & Bridging Gaps Amongst Political Polarization
In this episode, Rachel Strausman takes over the reins as host of Policy Chats from our previous host, Kevin Karami.
AllSides Co-Founder and CEO John Gable talks with students from the UC Riverside School of Public Policy about how understanding media bias and filter bubbles can help better bridge gaps amongst political polarization.
About John Gable:
John Gable received his B.A. in Philosophy, with an emphasis in Mathematics, from Vanderbilt University as well as Masters of Business Administration from Duke University. He has worked in a variety of fields, having previously been an Executive Director for various political campaigns, a Product Manager at Microsoft, the President of Stearns Ventures, and now the Co-Founder and CEO of AllSides. Overall, John Gable is a high technology executive focused on building, marketing and monetizing products, online services and teams that have a positive social impact.
Learn more about John Gable via https://www.allsides.com/news-source/john-gable
Podcast Highlights:
"The medium, the content, and the way we interact is driven a little bit by the medium itself. And what I thought about the internet was that it was mostly by metaphor: this is similar to that, and therefore you're a friend of a friend or I'm searching for something similar to what I'm trying to solve. I thought it would encourage us to think by metaphor or if you will, [in the extreme sense] stereotype."
- John Gable on the topic of how the internet is structured to make connections, which can initially be beneficial, but can also lead to dangerous steryotypes.
"[With the way the internet works] we see an issue, and we only hear or get information that we already agree with, which might only be 10% of what we need to know about an issue. But we hear that 10,000 times, and so we're really absolutely confident with no doubt that we're correct. But we know less about the issue than we did before the Internet.”
- John Gable on the topic of how filter bubbles can limit our access to necessary information, despite the increased access to information the internet seems to provide.
“[What we need to do is] get people out of the information filter bubble. Get them out of the relationship filter bubble, and provide people the skills and confidence to disagree, to have a conversation and not agree with each other and recognize the differences and appreciate the differences that each of us bring to the table. With that, that's how it would get to a better place.”
- John Gable on the topic of how teaching people to understand the value in disagreement can help people be more aware of filter bubbles.
Guest:
John Gable (Co-Founder and CEO of AllSides)
Interviewers:
Rachel Strausman (UCR Public Policy Major, Dean’s Vice Chief Ambassador)
Divya Bharadwaj (UCR Public Policy Major, Dean’s Ambassador)
Music by: C Codaine
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Xylo-Ziko/Minimal_1625
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Xylo-Ziko/Phase
Commercial Links:
https://spp.ucr.edu/ba-mpp
This is a production of the UCR School of Public Policy: https://spp.ucr.edu/
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