DEMOCRACY DISCONNECTED: SOCIAL MEDIA’S CAUSTIC INFLUENCE ON SOUTHEAST ASIA’S FRAGILE REPUBLICS in catering to our desires, they have contributed to an epidemic of “infobesity” that has left many people feeling overwhelmed, agitated, and alone.25 There is a growing body of research that explores the human response to ambiguity. As a species, humans have a natural propensity to try to quickly make sense of the world.26 The psychologist Jerome Kagan in a paper published in 1972 argued that uncertainty reduction is a primary driver of human behavior.27 We have, therefore, come to rely on heuristics, or mental shortcuts, that we use to aid our decisionmaking.28 While mental heuristics have proven to be an evolutionary advantage, spurring us to rapid action in response to often obscure dangers in our surroundings, they also contribute to certain biases that can negatively impact our ability to objectively analyze a given situation. Unfortunately, these cognitive fallacies are roused by the very nature of social media, which presents individuals with a barrage of information often intentionally culled by inexpert sources that can blur the boundary between fact and fiction. Of all the mental pitfalls most likely to ensnare the unsuspecting consumer of social media, the availability heuristic may be one of the most insidious. People have a tendency to assign greater importance to information that is prevalent in their environment. The ease with which one can recall certain knowledge can lead an individual to overvalue its significance when making decisions that take that information into account.29 When we assume an active role in deliberately choosing which content on social media we pay attention to, we are at risk of assigning greater weight to the information we are routinely presented with. As long as we are cognizant of this logical fallacy, it is possible to somewhat mitigate our susceptibility to it. However, what happens when we lose our ability to determine which information flows we are exposed to? The increasing personalization of the internet poses a dilemma: while it conveniently aggregates material automatically that we are likely to be interested in, it potentially omits information that might provide us with a more complete or accurate representation of reality. This blind spot forms the nexus of the internet’s divisive influence and people are becoming more oblivious to its very existence. The personalization of the internet has gained momentum over the past decade as a result of dramatic advances in machine learning. However, the primary factor underlying this trend toward tailored content is more economic than technical. Data mining has provided companies with a treasure trove of metrics that they have been able to exploit to customize user experiences in such a way that it benefits their bottom lines.30 In his book The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser traces efforts to personalize the web back to a watershed event that took place in December 2009. At that time, Google announced that it would rely on a set of 57 signals, including information such as a user’s geographic location and browsing history, to produce customized search results. While previously 25 Ephrat Livni, “If Information Overload is Stressing You Out, Go on a Silence Diet,” Quartz, July 9, 2017, https:// qz.com/1023948/if-information-overload-is-stressing-you-out-go-on-a-silence-diet/. 26 Marc Lewis, “Why We’re Hardwired to Hate Uncertainty,” The Guardian, April 4, 2016, https://www.theguardian. com/commentisfree/2016/apr/04/uncertainty-stressful-research-neuroscience. 27 Jerome Kagan, “Motives and Development,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 22, no. 1 (April 1972): 51-66, http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1972-24142-001. 28 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). 29 Ibid. 30 Mark Hachman, “The Price of Free: How Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Google Sell You to Advertisers,” PCWorld, October 1, 2015, https://www.pcworld.com/article/2986988/privacy/the-price-of-free-how-apple-facebook-microsoftand-google-sell-you-to-advertisers.html. 8 | Foreign Policy at Brookings