Combating homophily through design.

Social networking has allowed us to be in constant contact with friends from many different backgrounds, yet we are unaware of many of our friends' perspectives and opinions. Networks are highly homophilous, meaning that people tend to associate with others similar to them. This leads to homogenous clusters. How should we design social media to facilitate constructive exchanges rather than polarize individuals? In my work, I propose to look at whether users are currently aware of the homophily phenomenon in their online networks and exploring social network designs to break homophily.