Karim H Karim on Echo Chambers and Knowledge Bubbles

EDITORS’ NOTE: Dr. Karim H. Karim — Director of the Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam and former Co-Director of Institute of Ismaili Studies — discusses his insights on knowledge and media bubbles. Dr. Karim also discussed the vision and challenges behind the Second International Ismaili Studies Conference he hosted in March 2017. Note: This interview followed a different protocol than traditional interviews.

Short Excerpts from the Interview

Sahil Badruddin: Social media platforms are becoming echo chambers and media bubbles in their own right where we only get — or, rather, fed — news that we want to hear and agree with. Bubbles where we’re not getting other views but just reinforcing our pre-existing perspectives.

As someone who researches and teaches about the media professionally, what have you discovered on about this issue?

Karim H Karim: I remember reading an article in the Nation magazine in the mid-1990s, when the internet was still very new and far sighted people at that time had expected that this would happen. In fact, it was already happening, people with particular interests were just going to certain websites, as we tend to do. And because it is we who are reaching out, who are doing the searches, the kind of searches we do, basically, just take us to the sites that we like, and we agree with. Very few us want to be challenged so that’s what happens and the kinds of discussion groups and the kinds of websites and social media that people prefer, those are the places that people go [to]. For example, during the 2016 American election, this was very evident.

We saw it in Canada as well, where core groups basically like to stay with their own party and their own particular candidate, and no matter what other information comes to light they basically are part of that bubble and that’s what they see and they distrust everything else. It’s a very human tendency.

When a lot of people used to read newspapers, they, at least, were exposed to other ideas but even there they would tend to focus on the areas, or turn to a newspaper, with which they agreed. So now it is much narrower and because of the nature of the internet …

When a lot of people used to read newspapers, they, at least, were exposed to other ideas but even there they would tend to focus on the areas, or turn to a newspaper, with which they agreed. So now it is much narrower and because of the nature of the internet where we can search for information, we just go to the sites that we agree with.

Sahil: With these media bubbles, and this happens in the news media themselves, we see some of them adopting a fear of Muslims and other elements, do you see these kind of media bubbles increasing?

Karim K: Well, there will be some media who are … who have intensified their attacks on Islam, especially after 9/11. But my work, dating back to two decades preceding 9/11, showed that there was an antipathy, there was an antagonism towards Muslims and Islam, that is very long standing and it draws from hundreds of years of what, I guess, is now called Islamophobia but it’s a tendency you can even find before the Crusades, during the Crusades, after the Crusades and during the Golden Period, in early media like silent film and so on. And so it’s a continuum. I have written about this and I frequently talk about this. I guess certain current media have taken it to the extreme. Some who have journalists, who have become familiarized with the critique of this tendency have tried to understand Muslims better. But within the same newspaper or same program, you will find people who are very much in the habit of using stereotypes and others who are more careful about the use of their language and imagery.

Sahil: To step back just a bit, do you find that even the mainstream is its own bubble, like you mentioned in the US election?

Karim K: Well, yes, I guess I watched a lot of CNN and it was very clear with whom they sided with — not that I support Trump or anything like that — but the biases were very clear … I didn’t watch Fox, so I don’t know what they were doing. Some media were obviously under a lot of stress because they disagreed with Trump and they were not too sure about Hillary Clinton.

We have this myth of journalistic objectivity in North America. In Europe, newspapers tend to be much more open about their biases, about their partisan biases, about their leanings towards one party or another.

We have this myth of journalistic objectivity in North America. In Europe, newspapers tend to be much more open about their biases, about their partisan biases, about their leanings towards one party or another. We in North America, feel that we can be objective. I tell my students that it’s a human impossibility; we can be more critical, we can be more self-reflective and try to understand what our prejudices are, but we cannot eliminate 100% of them. So the media, on the one hand, try to be objective but they often don’t recognize what the problems are with objectivity so they just repeat the same mistakes. In that sense, some of the mass media do tend to live in their own worlds. Of course, again, I don’t want to generalize, as I said, in the same media, you will have people who think differently.

Sahil: How do you think we can, first, actually recognize that we have wrapped ourselves in a bubble, and then how do we break free from them?

Karim K: Try to be more self-reflective, to be more critical. And one of the areas that I have been looking at for the last few years is religious literacy. Various people at Harvard, including Ali Asani, Dianne Moore, and other people who have been working on the issue of religious literacy, ask how do you know what you know about a religion? How did we acquire particular knowledge about something? Asking about the sources, about the logic, the rationale which led us to have this kind of knowledge. Who did you learn it from? What sort of book did we read, what are the sources, whether it’s electronic media, or film, or whatever? We should constantly be self-reflective and fair to people. So this is basically what I teach in class, asking my students to be more self-reflective about how they’ve come to certain judgements and certain ideas, and we all need to do that constantly.

One of the areas that I have been looking at for the last few years is religious literacy…. [H]ow do you know what you know about a religion? How did we acquire particular knowledge about something? Asking about the sources, about the logic, the rationale which led us to have this kind of knowledge.

About Karim H Karim

Karim H. Karim, Ph.D., is a Professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication, of which he was previously the Director (2006-2009). He is currently the Director of the Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam. Karim also served as a Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, UK (2009-2011) and was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University in 2004. Before joining academia, he worked as Senior Researcher and as Senior Policy Analyst in the Department of Canadian Heritage. He has also been Chairperson of the Federal Digitization Task Force’s Working Group on the Accessibility to Digitized Collections and an elected Chairperson of Canadian Heritage’s Committee on Equal Access and Participation.

Prior to his work in the Government of Canada, he reported on Canada for Compass New Features (Luxembourg) and for Inter Press Service (Rome). He holds degrees in Islamic Studies and Communication Studies from Columbia and McGill Universities. Professor Karim serves on the boards of the Canadian Journal of Communication and Global Media Journal — Canadian Edition. He participated in the scholarly discussions leading to the founding of the Global Centre for Pluralism. Karim also led the preparation of a concept note for the development of a major in Communication and Media at the University of Central Asia and served as a member of the Advisory Committee of the Aga Khan University’s Graduate School of Media and Communications, Nairobi, Kenya. He is an Associate of Migration and Diaspora Studies, the Centre for European Studies, and the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture at Carleton University.