Contingent Encounters: Understanding the Relationship Between Homophily and Polarisation within Social Media

Abstract

We are witnessing a polarisation of opinions and political groupings across the world, as evidenced by the rise of populism, conspiracy theories and an increasing distrust of authority. One common theme which runs through this polarisation is the mediation of social media. I thus ask, what is it about social media that creates polarisation, and how can a philosophy of the encounter help remedy it? I argue existing understandings of polarisation online such as the filter bubble hypothesis are technologically deterministic. This determinism, I argue is confusing academic critiques of the sociological principle of homophily. To counter this position and extend our critique of homophily in network science, I propose to turn to Louis Althusser’s ‘The underground current of the materialism of the encounter’ in which he argues that contingency and openness is the material basis for freedom, thinking and the encountering of the world. With an emphasis on contingency, we can correctly ascertain how technology distorts and intervenes in the encounter. This paper aims to build on such a critical stance for analysing digital networks by reclaiming the contingency which defines true encounters and arguing that to understand polarisation means to move beyond the filter bubble hypothesis. This in turn enables a clearer understanding of the role homophily plays in causing polarisation within social media. The implications of these findings instruct us to look outside of algorithmic structure of social media and into the wider societal causes of polarisation.