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Political ideology radically shapes people's perceptions and ability to reason. Individuals who are easily capable of drawing mathematical or logical conclusions in politically-neutral contexts lose that ability when the conclusion contradicts their political ideology, and this effect is most extreme among those most capable of numerical reasoning. [1] Hence, political echo chambers can develop in Wikipedia content where editors systematically fail to objectively evaluate the neutrality of content or the reliability of sources based on political agreement or disagreement with their ideology. Because Wikipedia operates by consensus, these types of political disagreements can be paralyzing to Wikipedia's process of self-improvement, fortifying established political bias in entire articles or segments of content for years at a time.
Ultimately, the Wikipedia community and the public at large are worse off if Wikipedia is seen as a politically-biased project. The more one political group solidifies their own perspectives in various pieces of Wikipedia content, the more other political groups will doubt the neutrality of Wikipedia and dismiss it. It is sometimes difficult for editors to remember this when in the middle of heated debates, but if an editor has succeeded at securing his/her political perspective as the dominant one in an article, this is self-defeating, as that editor has harmed the reputation of the entire Wikipedia project.
While taking care to maintain the Wikipedia idea of neutrality, it is therefore conducive to the mission of Wikipedia to ensure that no piece of content is a political echo chamber by ensuring that material of political interest contains references to sources with a variety of political perspectives. A non-exhaustive list of commonly read news sources and think tanks that at least sometimes meet Wikipedia's reliability standards is provided here, organized by their political perspective, to aid editors in breaking up the ideological uniformity of echo chambers, and to help editors communicate across political barriers.
- ^ Kahan, Dan; Peters, Ellen; Dawson, Erica; Slovic, Paul (3 September 2013). "Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government". The Cultural Cognition Project (116). SSRN 2319992. Retrieved 21 January 2015.