Beyond Our Bubble

You probably think you are well-informed.

You follow the news. You read a lot. You may even fact-check things before sharing them. You are therefore convinced that you have a good overview of the world. However, somewhere out there, there are millions of people who are just as convinced as you, who read completely different things, trust completely different sources and arrive at completely different conclusions about the same reality.

This is not a coincidence. It is a system.

Beyond Our Bubble is an online course that explains how that system works – from the inside out. We start where it all begins: in the human brain, which was never designed for the information age. We then follow the trail outward to the algorithms that have learned to exploit our blind spots; to the media markets that have discovered that polarisation is profitable; and finally to the political actors who have realised that a fragmented public is an easy public to manipulate.

The course is centred on a key question that journalists should ask themselves: “How can I report the truth in an environment designed to make truth feel relative?”

We won’t provide easy answers. Instead, we will help you to map the information environment and trace the effects of how it is constructed.

Spread over ten short videos, a handful of readings and quizzes, and a few things that will make you feel slightly uneasy about your news habits — you will follow the full arc, from the psychology of perception to the mechanics of filter bubbles, and from the collapse of the gatekeeper model to the four ways in which power captures the media in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

This is not a course about what is wrong with other people’s media diets. It is about yours. And ours. And about the profession that we have chosen to practise as part of a system of bubbles that we could not picture – let alone fully see – until recently.

By the end, you won’t just have opinions about media polarisation; you’ll have the vocabulary, context and, hopefully, the productive discomfort to interrogate it properly. This discomfort comes from realising that our habits are not neutral and that our profession is not immune. It is not always comfortable. But it tends to produce better questions. And that is the goal.

If this leaves you wanting the bigger picture, the five global forces that these bubbles are actually fighting over (globalisation, climate change, migration, poverty, gender equality) are covered in our companion course, Global Challenges for Journalists. A Slovak-language version of the same course is also available: Globálne výzvy (nielen) pre študentov.

Beyond Our Bubble was created as part of the ‘World Between the Lines’ V4 journalism initiative, for Erasmus journalism students from V4 countries. All content is in English. No prior knowledge is required, just a willingness to question your own assumptions.

Impressum

The creation of all the content including videos, infographics, images and texts was directly contributed by professionals from the media and non-governmental sector, as well as interns from the Department of Journalism at Comenius University. It was also part of Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programme.

Disclaimer

The course is the result of cooperation between the World Between the Lines initiative, the non-profit organisation People in Peril and the Department of Journalism of the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University, in partnership  with the Department of Media and Communication of ELTE University, the Department of Media Studies and Journalism of Masaryk University, the Department of Media and Cultural Studies and Journalism of Palacky University and the Faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies of Warsaw University.

The preparation of this course was co-financed by SlovakAid and the European Union. The contents of the training course can in no way be considered as the views and positions of the donors.