Publication Type
Conference Proceeding Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
5-2013
Abstract
Fact checking has been hard enough to do in traditional settings, but, as news consumption is moving on the Internet and sources multiply, it is almost unmanageable. To solve this problem, researchers have created applications that expose people to diverse opinions and, as a result, expose them to balanced information. The wisdom of this solution is, however, placed in doubt by this paper. Survey responses of 60 individuals in the UK and South Korea and in-depth structured interviews of 10 respondents suggest that exposure to diverse opinions would not always work. That is partly because not all individuals equally value opinion diversity, and mainly because the same individual benefits from it only at times. We find that whether one looks for diverse opinions largely depends on three factors--one's prior convictions, emotional state, and social context.
Discipline
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics | Databases and Information Systems
Research Areas
Information Systems and Management; Intelligent Systems and Optimization; Software and Cyber-Physical Systems
Publication
Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference
ISBN
9781450318891
Identifier
10.1145/2464464.2464493
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
City or Country
Paris, France
Citation
AN, Jisun; QUERCIA, Daniele; and CROWCROFT, Jon.
Why individuals seek diverse opinions (or why they don't). (2013). Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/6861
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.