Information Cocoons In The Information Age

The concept of Information Cocoons was introduced by Cass R. Sunstein, in "Infotopia:How Many Minds Produce Knowledge". The development of network and the new communication technology are profoundly changing the entire social communication ecosystem. And the development also has brought about the debate the controversy between the two views, in which one believes in the existence of Information Cocoons and the other one firmly believes that the network is open and pluralistic. However, whether in Sunstein" s discussion or other studies on Information Cocoons, many questions remain. For example, are there any data to support the existence of Information Cocoons? How Information Cocoons are constructed? And these all become an urgent need to address and in-depth study.Under this background, after sorting out the related theoretical documents, this article takes the advertising Industry and educational circles as the research case, to study the behaviors of their opinion leaders on Microblog. And then this research utilizes the quantitative and real diagnosis method to analysis the research case, in order to argue about the existence of Information Cocoons by data and characterize the cocoons. Firstly, this paper researched on the user identity (he custom labels and personal history on Microblog) and the content of the samples on their Microblog, by using content analysis method and the software ROST content mining. Secondly, Social network analysis has been used to pay close attention to the relation table data of he samples on the platform of Microblog. And then, with the software UCMET it can draw the social relation network of the research case.Following are the main results:1、My results confirmed that t the Information Cocoons exist.2、The structure of cocoons can lead to the bafflement of the information content and flow in the cocoons. 3、 The structure of the wall is multiplayer. In terms of the closed cocoons, a breakthrough of cocoons depicts in the break of the first cocoon wall which is taken by the second cocoon wall.4、The Information Cocoons also has the nature of ethnic group. And on the other hand, if we can reverse an individual in the ethnic group, the change will likely influence the cocoons connected with the individual. So, this is becoming a seminal moment to break the cocoons, too.