Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 2...

Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 27 to 34.

        The internet was once hailed as a cartographer of enlightenment, mapping a global commons where truth could surge like a torrent and rinse away parochialism. Social platforms amplified that ideal by promising unprecedented conviviality across networks; movements flourished, long-distance bonds thickened. Yet the same infrastructures incubate division: engagement-hungry systems prioritize spectacle, and minor disagreements metastasize into rancor. In this double-edged arena, amplification is indifferent to accuracy, and virality can enthrone hearsay as if it were proof.

        Consider debates over hydroxychloroquine during Covid-19: opinions hardened into camps whose beliefs scarcely overlapped, even as communication remained abundant. Curiously, it seems that whether or not one thinks hydroxychloroquine will be effective against Covid-19 rests strongly on one’s political persuasion – a radical politicization of truth. Amid fake news and viral misinformation, identity begins to adjudicate evidence. When allegiance precedes appraisal, facts are retrofitted to fit a tribe, and polarization ossifies – not because data are absent, but because meaning is pre-assigned.

        Democracy depends less on unanimity of beliefs than on a shared pool of information from which citizens can assess credibility. If my feed celebrates Apollo 11 while yours insists it was staged, our judgments scarcely intersect. Remove real encounters and each of us is marooned inside self-reinforcing convictions. This state increasingly typifies the personalized web, the filter bubble Eli Pariser named: algorithmic curation, propelled by surveillance-capitalist incentives, sieves what we see, matching cravings rather than civic nourishment.

        Our clicks confess who we are; platforms harvest those signals to optimize return visits. Tristan Harris calls it the attention economy – systems designed to discover what will keep us scrolling. Personalization can shade into manipulation: curated timelines may induce mood shifts and behavioral nudges, a kind of massive-scale emotional contagion. When convenience outruns autonomy, the architecture of choice invisibly narrows. The line between persuading citizens and steering them blurs, and a shared reality fractures into monetized micro-realities.

(Adapted from Montana State University, “Social Media and the Filter Bubble”)

Question 27. The word torrent in paragraph 1 can be best replaced by ______?

A. respite                B. deluge                        C. eddy                        D. trickle