The Internet as Social Amplifierinfographic description

The infographic is titled, Thinking Critically About: The Internet as Social Amplifier. The learning objective question 13-10 reads, what role does the internet play in group polarization?

The header reads, “The Internet connects like-minded people.”

The first part is titled, “These connections can bring emotional healing, such as for cancer survivors and bereaved parents.” A set of four interconnected illustrations surround a schematic of a crying woman working on a laptop. The surrounding illustration shows a hand holding a smartphone displaying a heart symbol.

The second part is titled, “Online sharing can also strengthen social movements.” The Antisocial statements are as follows: White supremacy, Anti-government militias, and climate change skeptics. The prosocial statements are as follows: hashtag never again, hashtag times up, hashtag black lives matter. A schematic accompanies each statement.

The third part is titled, “Electronic communication and social networking encourage people to isolate themselves from those with different opinions.” The third part shows like-minded separation plus conversation leads to group polarization. A text reads, “On social media, we often share political content with like-minded others (Bakshy et al., 2015; Barberá et al., 2015).” The text points to two illustrations. The first illustration shows supporting candidate A surrounded by uppercase and lowercase letters of A that are interconnected. The second illustration shows supporting candidate B surrounded by uppercase and lowercase letters of B that are interconnected.