Cover of the textbook Speakout Advanced Plus - Students' Book

The key answer of exercise 3

The key to exercise solutions in chapter 4.5 - Lookback for the textbook Speakout Advanced Plus - Students' Book with authors Frances Eales and Steve Oakes from Pearson Education

Question

  1. Add vowels to complete the social media-related expressions.
  2. How are a) and b) related in each case?

Answer

a)

  1. a) censored b) unbiased
  2. a) hacking b) trolling
  3. a) bubbles b) segregation
  4. a) reinforce b) echo chambers
  5. a) algorithms b) filtering
  6. a) fake b) post-truth

b)

  1. If something is censored, it's not unbiased; censorship is a form of bias.
  2. Both hacking and trolling are done by people with particular knowledge of how the internet works, but hackers have technical knowledge and can penetrate protected systems, whereas trolls seek to influence thought by attacking individuals or groups, i.e. trolls have some knowledge of how social influence works.
  3. The separation of online communities into 'bubbles IS a form of segregation.
  4. The 'echo chambers', because they repeat the same opinion which one already holds anyway, reinforce that belief.
  5. The filtering of, e.g. online news / info is done through the use of algorithms which contain information about individual views and preferences.
  6. Fake news is characteristic of the post-truth era; the term 'post-truth' came into use as a result of fake news becoming so prominent and influential.