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Category: Effects
Type: A communications universe woven by choosing what one already wants
Origin: Cass R. Sunstein, Infotopia (Oxford University Press, 2006). The book was not re-read. The sentence below is from the publisher preview, page marker 9. The counted test is Iyengar and Hahn, Journal of Communication 59 (2009), pages 19–39
Also known as: information cocoon. This page does not rotate that name with an echo chamber or a filter bubble
Quick Answer — Information Cocoons, on this page, are communications universes in which a person hears only what they choose and only what comforts them. Cass R. Sunstein prints that sentence in Infotopia. The counted act is narrower. In 2006, the same headline drew a different click when the logo changed. That click is not a sealed diet.

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What is Information Cocoons?

Information Cocoons are communications universes a person weaves by keeping what they already want to hear, and leaving out the rest.
“The central problem involves information cocoons: communications universes in which we hear only what we choose and only what comforts and pleases us.”
That sentence is from the publisher preview of Cass R. Sunstein, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 2006). The preview marks the page as 9, under “Dreams and Nightmares.” The book was not re-read. The strong word is “only.” A menu that still offers another logo has not met that word. The image of a silkworm fits the metaphor: each strand is a choice the person already liked. The shell is thick only if later choices keep using the same strand. Echo Chamber Effect is a social enclosure that repeats one side and discounts the other. Confirmation Bias is the search for evidence that fits a belief already held. Neither one inherits the click rates below.

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Information Cocoons in 3 Depths

  • Beginner: Before you treat a favorite logo as the whole story, write the headline and the logo on two lines. In the 2006 test, those two were not the same fact.
  • Practitioner: On one menu, record what was offered, what you clicked, and what you never opened. A congenial click answers only the middle line.
  • Advanced: “Around 10 percent” is the authors’ average chance that a Republican selected a CNN or NPR report. “Nearly doubled” is their wording for travel and sports among Republicans. The Fox coefficients in Table 1 are conditional logit estimates, not those percents.

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Origin

The definitional sentence on this page is the 2006 preview. The same paragraph says Nicholas Negroponte prophesied the Daily Me, a personalized newspaper in which each person could select topics and perspectives they like. Being Digital was not re-read. No year and no page from that book appear here. The same preview calls these universes warm, friendly places where everyone shares our views, and says major errors are the price of that comfort. That is his warning. It is not a counted result for a firm or a government. The earlier filtering claim is Republic.com (Princeton University Press, 2001). This page did not re-read it. Shanto Iyengar and Kyu S. Hahn quote pages 201–202 for people who wall themselves off from topics and opinions they would prefer to avoid. No other sentence from the 2001 book is used here. Iyengar and Hahn place the taste for agreeable information before the web. They cite Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957), for the prediction that people seek what they expect to agree with. They also write that early tests mixed a deliberate choice with exposure that simply came from one’s surroundings, citing David O. Sears and Jonathan L. Freedman (1967). Neither of those two sources was re-read. No count from them is on this page. The counted test of the label is Shanto Iyengar and Kyu S. Hahn, “Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use,” Journal of Communication 59 (2009), pages 19–39. The PDF prints doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.01402.x and does not print a month. The journal record dates the article 26 March 2009. Iyengar’s byline is the Department of Communication, Stanford University. Hahn’s byline is Underwood International College, Yonsei University, and the Department of Communication Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. A separate limit on the word “only” is the abstract of R. Kelly Garrett, “Echo chambers online?: Politically motivated selective exposure among Internet news users,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14(2), pages 265–285, 2009. The publisher record is doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01440.x, dated 1 January 2009. The PDF was not re-read. His title asks about echo chambers. This page uses the abstract only as a limit on avoidance. It does not move his study onto the Echo Chamber Effect page.

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Key Points

Four readings keep the word “only,” the logo, the partisan click, and the unopened rest of a diet apart.
1

Only is the claim, not the measurement

Sunstein’s sentence is a universe in which we hear only what we choose and only what comforts and pleases us. The same preview ties that risk to a Daily Me built from topics and perspectives a person already likes. Iyengar and Hahn’s screen did not remove the other logos. Each person saw four headlines plus a box marked Can’t Say, and did that once in each of six topics. Choosing the comforting logo is a strand. It is not, by itself, the finished shell.
2

The logo was not the newsroom

Stories came from the MSNBC daily feed and were randomly assigned to a Fox, NPR, CNN, or BBC logo. The control group saw the same headlines with every logo deleted. Order, headline, and logo were counterbalanced. A higher click on a Fox logo is a response to the label, not proof that Fox News wrote the story, and not proof that the reader finished it. The study asked which report they would like to read. It did not time the reading.
3

The partisan click is real, and uneven

Republicans were drawn to the Fox label and avoided CNN and NPR. The authors write that, on average, the probability a Republican would select a CNN or NPR report was around 10 percent. Democrats were as averse to Fox as Republicans were to CNN and NPR, and they did not settle on one other source. Later tests found liberals strongly averse to Fox, with no significant preference among the non-Fox logos. The Fox label nearly doubled the selection rate for travel and sports stories among Republicans. That wording is theirs. It is not a printed ratio, and it is not the result for politics or Iraq.
4

Avoidance is the weaker move

Garrett’s abstract says opinion-reinforcing information promotes exposure to a story, while opinion-challenging information makes exposure only marginally less likely. Both influences are modest, and reinforcement is the more important predictor. Once someone had decided to view a story, the abstract finds no evidence that they abandoned a story because it disagreed with them. The subjects were recruited from the readers of two partisan online news sites, N = 727. No coefficient and no site name from that article are printed here. N = 727 is not a head count inside the 2006 label test.

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Applications

Four checks keep a comforting click from being logged as a universe in which nothing else can be heard.

Write the headline apart from the logo

When a story feels settled, copy the headline on one line and the source logo on the next. In the 2006 design those two were randomly paired. If you cannot separate them, you do not yet know which one you chose.

Leave the other logo on the menu

A cocoon in Sunstein’s sentence requires that the other side not be heard. On a work menu or a class reading list, keep one item you did not expect to want. Record whether you opened it. Opening it is not agreement. Leaving it off the menu is a different act from skipping it.

Do not make one logo the household

A family, a team, or a class can share a favorite source and still meet other sources outside that hour. Ask what else was on offer. The 2006 person faced four logos and a Can’t Say box, six times. That menu is not a kitchen, a classroom, or a group chat.

Leave the 2006 rates in 2006

Around 10 percent, the phrase “nearly doubled,” and the Fox logit coefficients belong to registered voters in a Polimetrix matched sample, from 30 March through 16 April 2006, clicking headlines from an MSNBC feed. They are not a feed rate, a firm rate, or a rate for a later year.

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Case Study

From 30 March through 16 April 2006, Iyengar and Hahn showed recent headlines to 1,023 registered voters recruited through Polimetrix. They describe that group as a nationally representative sample. The paper’s footnote says matching on race, gender, age, education, and imputed party and ideology does not imply the sample is unbiased. This page does not copy the comparisons in that footnote. Of the 1,023, 772 saw source logos and 251 saw the same headlines with the logos deleted. The authors also call the unlabeled group about one-quarter of the study. The story pool held 383 items. Iraq contributed 60, politics 71, race relations 40, and travel 11. The paragraph that gives those four counts does not print the sports or crime counts. Each person chose among four reports, or Can’t Say, in six topics. Hard topics were American politics, the war in Iraq, and race relations. Soft topics were crime, travel, and sports. Figure 1 treats the story as the unit and the selection rate as the share of respondents who clicked it. The same story drew a different audience when the logo was Fox, CNN, or NPR. Republicans moved toward Fox. The authors’ average for a Republican selecting CNN or NPR was around 10 percent. The Fox label nearly doubled selection of travel and sports stories among Republicans, on a travel pool of 11 stories. Democrats avoided Fox and did not converge on CNN or NPR. The paper says liberals have a strong aversion to Fox and no particular affinity among the non-Fox sources. The pairwise tests among those non-Fox logos were not significant. Table 1 reports conditional logit coefficients for the Fox logo against the unlabeled baseline, with standard errors in parentheses. Politics is .613 (.267), race relations .743 (.201), Iraq .981 (.229), sports .645 (.166), crime .767 (.203), and travel .360 (.168). Each topic uses N = 1,023. Politics and travel are marked p < .05. The other four Fox coefficients are marked p < .01. The paper’s note calls these deviations in selection rates from the baseline. They are still logit coefficients. A reader must not turn .981 into a 98-point gap, and must not treat .360 as the “nearly doubled” sentence. The non-Fox coefficients are not printed on this page. The lesson is the strand, not the shell. People clicked a logo that fit the side they already held, including on soft topics the authors had expected to be quieter. The screen still contained the other logos. Garrett’s abstract, from a different sample, says reinforcement outweighs a marginal reluctance to open a challenging story, and that avoidance fades once the story is open. Sunstein’s “only” remains a claim these two designs did not finish measuring.

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Boundaries and Failure Modes

Information Cocoons do not license a share of people who hear nothing from the other side. The 2006 task offered the other logos on every labeled screen. Around 10 percent is the authors’ average for Republicans selecting CNN or NPR, not a rate for Democrats, and not a share of a day’s reading. “Nearly doubled” covers travel and sports among Republicans. It is not a hard-news result, and travel rests on 11 stories. The Fox coefficients are not click shares. Do not paste these figures onto a platform, a firm, a class, or a family. Do not read the matched sample as a census. The study did not record whether anyone read past the click. Garrett’s N = 727 is two partisan readerships in a different design. His PDF was not re-read, so no coefficient from it belongs here. Festinger 1957 and Sears and Freedman 1967 were not re-read. Group Polarization is a shift after like-minded talk. False Consensus Effect is mistaking one’s own circle for the public. In-Group Bias is favoring people marked as one’s own side. A comforting logo can feed all three. None of them is the click measured above, and none of them carries these coefficients.

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Common Misconceptions

A congenial click, a sealed room, and an algorithmic sort are easy to collapse into one story. The sources below do not.
Sunstein’s “only” is the strong claim. On the 2006 screen the other logos were still listed, and the authors’ average chance that a Republican selected CNN or NPR was around 10 percent. Garrett’s abstract says a challenging story makes exposure only marginally less likely, and that this reluctance does not show up once the story is chosen. Marginal and only are not the same size.
Information Cocoons, here, are the universe a person weaves by choice. The Echo Chamber Effect page is the enclosure that repeats one side, and it keeps filter bubble for selection by an algorithm according to earlier behavior. Confirmation bias is a search for fitting evidence. Using one name for all four hides which cut was measured. The Facebook figures on the echo-chamber page do not move here.
“Nearly doubled” is the authors’ prose for the Fox label on travel and sports stories among Republicans. It is not a printed ratio and not the politics or Iraq contrast. Iraq’s Fox coefficient is .981 (.229), a conditional logit estimate against unlabeled headlines, marked p < .01. It is not 98 percentage points. Travel’s coefficient is .360 (.168). That is a third number, beside the doubling sentence and beside the 11 travel stories.
Information Cocoons sit beside an enclosure that repeats one side, beside a search for fitting evidence, beside a shift after like-minded talk, beside mistaking one’s circle for the public, and beside favoritism toward one’s own side. The 2006 coefficients stay on this page.

Echo Chamber Effect

A social enclosure that repeats one side and discounts the other. The choice of a comforting logo can feed that enclosure. The two pages do not share a sample.

Confirmation Bias

Seeking and reading evidence so that it fits a belief already held. A logo click can be that search. The search can also happen on a mixed menu.

Group Polarization

A shift toward a more extreme position after discussion among people who already lean the same way. Repeated comfort is not, by itself, that shift.

False Consensus Effect

Treating one’s own menu as if it were the public. A universe of comforting sources makes that mistake easier. The mistake is the inference.

In-Group Bias

Favoring people marked as one’s own side. The 2006 score is a logo on a headline. It is not a laboratory rating of the in-group.

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One-Line Takeaway

Before you call a diet sealed, write the headline, the logo, and whether the other logo was even on the menu. Those three are not one click.