# Email Filtering
*By filtering my email, I am optimizing how I intake information. I am able to seperate parts of my brain to better understand what I am reading, a strategy that also helps when consuming media.*



## "Fake News"
In today's age, the motives of every news article on a controversial topic are questioned. It makes sense, because we know how much influence media has on our opinions, so naturally, people will leverage this fact for personal (and often monetary) gain. Sometimes people will use false claims and incorrect facts to push a narrative, like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory">Pizzagate</a> (Boyd para 11). but other times real news articles are taken out of context and weaponized to push a narrative (Wardle para 3). Furthermore, publications like <a href="https://www.theonion.com/">The Onion</a> write parody articles, but sometimes those articles are mistaken for real articles which can cause damage. Also, in some cases, people try to defend fake articles they have written by retroactively claiming them as parodies.

Since we have all heard the term "fake news" and know to be weary of articles' biases, why do we all still eat and distribute so much misinformation? This is due to something called filter bubbles. An analogy for filter bubbles is if you live in a gated community, you might think that Teslas and BMWs are "normal" cars because they are mostly the cars you see (Filter Bubbles para 7). Filter bubbles on the internet are what content we consume. Most people get their news from a couple of similar news sources which tend to be biased and skew information in a way that is favorable to their pre-formed opinion. Some examples of how filter bubbles can influence public opinion are the public's surprise at the results of Brexit and the 2016 US election. In both cases, people were in filter bubbles where they were eating up news that fit their opinions, and when the result was different than that they were extremely surprised due to their limited intake of non-bias media. So with all of this, we have to think of ways we can get free from biased media, and the main way to do this is by popping our filter bubbles. Some ways to do this are using ad blockers, clearing search history, switching your motives from entertainment to education, and using news sites with a wide range of perspectives.