How Facebook Polarizes Public Debate in Poland - Polish Filter Bubble

Abstract

The dissemination of the media has led to the phenomenon of the mediatization of social re-ality, which in the era of new media has become dominant, because the new media have infiltratedalmost every aspect of human functioning. The surprising paradox of the new media is the fact thaton the one hand they give access to almost unlimited information, on the other hand they narrow itdown extremely. The modern media user, often without realizing it, “uses” only the information thatis offered to him by specially selected internet algorithms. Created in this way the so-called “informa-tion/filter bubble” condemns him to the only vision of reality - and in the absence of the possibility ofverifying his observations what results from the way the new media works - in his opinion the onlytrue one. This is particularly important in creating the vision of social order and the functioning ofthe state. The mediatisation of Polish social reality - especially in the context of social media - led tothe emergence of polarized groups isolated from each other and caused a lack of rational politicaldebate on a number of important social issues.