Opinion | Can the coronavirus crisis break Hongkongers out of their echo chambers?

As the coronavirus epidemic continues to disrupt daily life, people are turning to the internet to exchange information and stay connected. Most of these exchanges are benign, but in some corners of the internet, people with a certain political affiliation are not only blaming the outbreak on other people but are also inclined to see their misfortunes as karma.

Ideological echo chambers are nothing new, of course, but the advent of the internet has greatly amplified their reach and power. These online echo chambers, along with fake news, are believed to have led to an increasingly polarised society – and, around the world, it has proven hard to break people out of their political bubbles.

But how exactly do these echo chambers influence how young people see the world? With the rise of the internet, there is arguably more information available than ever before. Yet, there are also more concerns that people are clustering in online echo chambers.

As the argument goes, the crowded media environment made possible by the internet means that individuals are free to select information according to their personal preference, thereby reinforcing existing views and beliefs and causing the individual to overestimate the proportion of the general population holding the same views as them.

The information explosion has probably had a more serious impact on young people, as they are among the most adept users of the internet. In a study conducted in 2019, 45 per cent of young people aged 18 to 24 in 10 developed countries said their first contact with news in the morning was through their smartphone; specifically, 26 per cent would be getting their morning news from social media via a smartphone.

In Hong Kong, 89.2 per cent of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 get their news online. This reliance on the internet and social media, however, means that young people are more likely to be stuck in echo chambers.