BY NICOLAS GAUVRIT AND MARIELLE GUILLAUD
The Internet is often accused of being a platform for the proliferation of false news and irrational beliefs. The accusation is not without merit.1 Attitudes of mistrust towards vaccines, for example, could be enhanced by the power of the global network. 2More specifically, Internet users are expected to fall into a series of traps that their brains set for them and that the characteristics of the Internet intensify. First, the infamous confirmation bias could push users to seek information in accordance with their previous ideas, by selecting requests and choosing to look at sites that meet their preconceptions.3
The confirmation bias can be further reinforced by the fact that we live (on social networks especially) in echo chambers,4 surrounded by people who share our beliefs, even the strangest ones, and seeing only ad hoc sites selected for us by search engines.