POLAR BUBBLES

Polar Bubbles explores how filter bubbles, polarization, and echo chambers affect modern media. It looks at personalized algorithms and information networks, showing how ideological isolation impacts public discussions.

news.cunicode.com

Polar Bubbles breaks down daily news with a flavour: every story comes with two opposing takes—one far-left, one far-right. Each take has two versions: a clickbait headline and a straightforward, informative one. That’s four headlines for the same story, showing just how wild framing can get.

It’s all about exposing the madness of polarization, media manipulation, and those sneaky algorithms that decide what you see. By laying it all out, Polar Bubbles shows how news shapes what we think, feeds our biases, and drives us further apart. It’s a reality check for anyone stuck in an echo chamber.

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toolset:

• News are fetched via newsapi.org,

• Titles made with a LLM (GPT-4o-mini)

• System instructed as following:

self.prompts_politic_left = """
    Adopt an extreme far-left, progressive perspective with a heavy socialist viewpoint. 
    If the news seems positive from a capitalist or conservative standpoint, frame it as negative or problematic. 
    If it seems negative from that standpoint, frame it as a positive step towards socialist ideals. 
    Emphasize one of the following randomly: wealth redistribution, workers' rights, environmental activism, or social justice."""

self.prompts_politic_right = """
    Take on an extreme far-right, ultra-conservative stance with a heavy nationalist perspective. 
    If the news seems positive from a socialist or progressive standpoint, frame it as negative or threatening. 
    If it seems negative from that standpoint, frame it as a positive development for traditional values or the free market. 
    Focus on one of these aspects randomly: traditional values, free-market capitalism, national security, or anti-globalization."""

self.prompts_tone_viral = """
    Create sensationalist, emotionally-charged clickbait. Use shocking language, exaggeration, and inflammatory rhetoric to gain views. 
    Keep it very short and viral. Add emoji if it enhances the tone. Randomly incorporate one of these elements: unexpected statistics, conspiracy theories, or urgent calls to action."""

self.prompts_tone_formal = """
    Craft an informative, journalistic headline with complex vocabulary and detailed analysis. 
    Describe why the news is significant, good, or bad, ensuring this aligns with the given political bias. 
    Emphasize positioning and context. Randomly focus on one of these angles: historical parallels, economic implications, societal impact, or future predictions."""

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Glossary

A filter bubble or ideological frame is a state of intellectual isolation^[1] that can result from personalized searches, recommendation systems, and algorithmic curation. The search results are based on information about the user, such as their location, past click-behavior, and search history.^[2] Consequently, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles, resulting in a limited and customized view of the world.^[3] The choices made by these algorithms are only sometimes transparent.^[4] Prime examples include Google Personalized Search results and Facebook's personalized news-stream.

However, there are conflicting reports about the extent to which personalized filtering happens and whether such activity is beneficial or harmful, with various studies producing inconclusive results.

In news media and social media, an echo chamber is an environment or ecosystem in which participants encounter beliefs that amplify or reinforce their preexisting beliefs by communication and repetition inside a closed system and insulated from rebuttal.^[2][3][4] An echo chamber circulates existing views without encountering opposing views, potentially resulting in confirmation bias. Echo chambers may increase social and political polarization and extremism.^[5] On social media, it is thought that echo chambers limit exposure to diverse perspectives, and favor and reinforce presupposed narratives and ideologies.^[4][6]

The term is a metaphor based on an acoustic echo chamber, in which sounds reverberate in a hollow enclosure. Another emerging term for this echoing and homogenizing effect within social-media communities on the Internet is neotribalism.

Clickbait (also known as link bait or linkbait)^[2] is a text or a thumbnail link that is designed to attract attention and to entice users to follow ("click") that link and view, read, stream or listen to the linked piece of online content, being typically deceptive, sensationalized, or otherwise misleading.^[3][4][5] A "teaser" aims to exploit the "curiosity gap", providing just enough information to make readers of news websites curious, but not enough to satisfy their curiosity without clicking through to the linked content. Clickbait headlines often add an element of dishonesty, using enticements that do not accurately reflect the content being delivered.^[6][7][8] The "-bait" suffix makes an analogy with fishing, where a hook is disguised by an enticement (bait), presenting the impression to the fish that it is a desirable thing to swallow.^[9]

Before the Internet, a marketing practice known as bait-and-switch used similar dishonest methods to hook customers. In extreme degree, like bait-and-switch, clickbait is a form of fraud. (Click fraud, however, is a separate form of online misrepresentation which uses a more extreme disconnect between what is being presented in the frontside of the link versus what is on the click-through side of the link, also encompassing malicious code.) The term clickbait does not encompass all cases where the user arrives at a destination that is not anticipated from the link that is clicked.

Far-left politics, also known as extreme left politics or left-wing extremism, are politics further to the left on the left–right political spectrum than the standard political left. The term does not have a single, coherent definition; some scholars consider it to be the left of communist parties, while others broaden it to include the left of social democracy. In certain instances—especially in the news media—far left has been associated with some forms of authoritarianism, anarchism, communism, and Marxism, or are characterized as groups that advocate for revolutionary socialism and related communist ideologies, or anti-capitalism and anti-globalization. Far-left terrorism consists of extremist, militant, or insurgent groups that attempt to realize their ideals through political violence rather than using democratic processes.

The definition of the far-left varies in the literature and there is not a general agreement on what it entails or consensus on the core characteristics that constitute the far left, other than being to the left of mainstream left-wing politics.^[1] As with all political alignments, the exact boundaries of centre-left versus far-left politics are not clearly defined and can vary depending on context.^[2] Far-left ideologies often include types of socialism, communism, and anarchism.^[3][4]

Far-right politics, often termed right-wing extremism, encompasses a range of ideologies that are typically marked by radical conservatism, authoritarianism, ultra-nationalism, and nativism.^[1] This political spectrum situates itself on the far end of the right, distinguished from more mainstream right-wing ideologies by its opposition to liberal democratic norms and emphasis on exclusivist views. Far-right ideologies have historically included fascism, Nazism, and Falangism, while contemporary manifestations also incorporate neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, white supremacy, and various other movements characterized by chauvinism, xenophobia, and theocratic or reactionary beliefs.

Key to the far-right worldview is the notion of societal purity, often invoking ideas of a homogeneous "national" or "ethnic" community. This view generally promotes organicism, which perceives society as a unified, natural entity under threat from diversity or modern pluralism. Far-right movements frequently target perceived threats to their idealized community, whether ethnic, religious, or cultural, leading to anti-immigrant sentiments, welfare chauvinism, and, in extreme cases, political violence or oppression.^[2] According to political theorists, the far-right appeals to those who believe in maintaining strict cultural and ethnic divisions and a return to traditional social hierarchies and values.^[3]