scholarly journals Echo chamber detection and analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Villa ◽  
Gabriella Pasi ◽  
Marco Viviani
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Community Detection ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Detection Strategy ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Content Aware

AbstractSocial media allow to fulfill perceived social needs such as connecting with friends or other individuals with similar interests into virtual communities; they have also become essential as news sources, microblogging platforms, in particular, in a variety of contexts including that of health. However, due to the homophily property and selective exposure to information, social media have the tendency to create distinct groups of individuals whose ideas are highly polarized around certain topics. In these groups, a.k.a. echo chambers, people only "hear their own voice,” and divergent visions are no longer taken into account. This article focuses on the study of the echo chamber phenomenon in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, by considering both the relationships connecting individuals and semantic aspects related to the content they share over Twitter. To this aim, we propose an approach based on the application of a community detection strategy to distinct topology- and content-aware representations of the COVID-19 conversation graph. Then, we assess and analyze the controversy and homogeneity among the different polarized groups obtained. The evaluations of the approach are carried out on a dataset of tweets related to COVID-19 collected between January and March 2020.

Echo Chambers, Fake News, and Social Epistemology

2021 ◽  
pp. 206-227
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lackey
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Fox News ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
Echo Chamber

A familiar criticism of Donald Trump is that, in watching only Fox News and similar news sources, he is creating a dangerous echo chamber for himself. Echo chambers are said to be responsible for a host of today’s problems, including the degradation of democracy. This diagnosis is fundamentally incorrect, and this chapter examines the two dominant explanations of the distinctively epistemic problem with echo chambers and shows that each is wanting. Echo chambers, by themselves, are not epistemically problematic. Echo chambers are characterized in purely structural terms, but what is needed to capture what is wrong with Trump’s exposure to only Fox News is content-sensitive. It is not that Trump is relying on a single source for news, but that he is relying on one that is unreliable. Finally, the chapter calls attention to the challenge of social media bots and the role of non-ideal social epistemology.

scholarly journals Recursive patterns in online echo chambers

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuele Brugnoli ◽  
Matteo Cinelli ◽  
Walter Quattrociocchi ◽  
Antonio Scala
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Peer Influence ◽  
Confirmation Bias ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
User Engagement ◽  
Informational Cascades ◽  
Common System ◽  
Time Aggregation ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
Echo Chamber

AbstractDespite their entertainment oriented purpose, social media changed the way users access information, debate, and form their opinions. Recent studies, indeed, showed that users online tend to promote their favored narratives and thus to form polarized groups around a common system of beliefs. Confirmation bias helps to account for users’ decisions about whether to spread content, thus creating informational cascades within identifiable communities. At the same time, aggregation of favored information within those communities reinforces selective exposure and group polarization. Along this path, through a thorough quantitative analysis we approach connectivity patterns of 1.2 M Facebook users engaged with two very conflicting narratives: scientific and conspiracy news. Analyzing such data, we quantitatively investigate the effect of two mechanisms (namely challenge avoidance and reinforcement seeking) behind confirmation bias, one of the major drivers of human behavior in social media. We find that challenge avoidance mechanism triggers the emergence of two distinct and polarized groups of users (i.e., echo chambers) who also tend to be surrounded by friends having similar systems of beliefs. Through a network based approach, we show how the reinforcement seeking mechanism limits the influence of neighbors and primarily drives the selection and diffusion of contents even among like-minded users, thus fostering the formation of highly polarized sub-clusters within the same echo chamber. Finally, we show that polarized users reinforce their preexisting beliefs by leveraging the activity of their like-minded neighbors, and this trend grows with the user engagement suggesting how peer influence acts as a support for reinforcement seeking.

scholarly journals Network structure and patterns of information diversity on Twitter

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Conan Shore ◽  
Jiye Baek ◽  
Chrysanthos Dellarocas
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information Sharing ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
Network Structure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
Information Diversity

Social media have great potential to support diverse information sharing, but there is widespread concern that platforms like Twitter do not result in communication between those who hold contradictory viewpoints. Because users can choose whom to follow, prior research suggests that social media users exist in "echo chambers" or become polarized. We seek evidence of this in a complete cross section of hyperlinks posted on Twitter, using previously validated measures of the political slant of news sources to study information diversity. Contrary to prediction, we find that the average account posts links to more politically moderate news sources than the ones they receive in their own feed. However, members of a tiny network core do exhibit cross-sectional evidence of polarization and are responsible for the majority of tweets received overall due to their popularity and activity, which could explain the widespread perception of polarization on social media.

scholarly journals Incidental Exposure to Non-Like-Minded News through Social Media: Opposing Voices in Echo-Chambers’ News Feeds

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 53-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pere Masip ◽  
Jaume Suau ◽  
Carlos Ruiz-Caballero
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Online News ◽  
Audience Participation ◽  
News Content ◽  
Media System ◽  
Weak Association ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
Incidental Exposure

Debates about post-truth need to take into account how news re-disseminates in a hybrid media system in which social networks and audience participation play a central role. Hence, there is a certain risk of reducing citizens’ exposure to politically adverse news content, creating ‘echo chambers’ of political affinity. This article presents the results of research conducted in agreement with 18 leading Spanish online news media, based on a survey (N = 6625) of their registered users. The results highlight that high levels of selective exposure that are a characteristic of offline media consumption are being moderated in the online realm. Although most of the respondents get news online from like-minded media, the figures related to those who also get news from media with a different media ideology should not be underestimated. As news consumption is becoming more ‘social,’ our research points out that Spanish citizens who are more active on social media sites are more likely to be exposed to news content from different ideological positions than those who are less active users. There is a weak association between the use of a particular social network site and gaining access to like- and non-like-minded news.

scholarly journals The echo chamber effect on social media

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (9) ◽  
pp. e2023301118
Author(s):  
Matteo Cinelli ◽  
Gianmarco De Francisci Morales ◽  
Alessandro Galeazzi ◽  
Walter Quattrociocchi ◽  
Michele Starnini
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information Diffusion ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
Interaction Networks ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Shared Narrative ◽  
Formation Of Groups ◽  
Chamber Effect

Social media may limit the exposure to diverse perspectives and favor the formation of groups of like-minded users framing and reinforcing a shared narrative, that is, echo chambers. However, the interaction paradigms among users and feed algorithms greatly vary across social media platforms. This paper explores the key differences between the main social media platforms and how they are likely to influence information spreading and echo chambers’ formation. We perform a comparative analysis of more than 100 million pieces of content concerning several controversial topics (e.g., gun control, vaccination, abortion) from Gab, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter. We quantify echo chambers over social media by two main ingredients: 1) homophily in the interaction networks and 2) bias in the information diffusion toward like-minded peers. Our results show that the aggregation of users in homophilic clusters dominate online interactions on Facebook and Twitter. We conclude the paper by directly comparing news consumption on Facebook and Reddit, finding higher segregation on Facebook.

scholarly journals Porous Chambers, Echoes of Valence and Stereotypes

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate M. Turetsky ◽  
Travis A. Riddle
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Online News ◽  
News Sources ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
High Connectivity

Selective exposure to one-sided news coverage, especially of controversial geopolitical events, may contribute to growing social polarization. Existing research on “echo chambers”—fragmented information environments that amplify homogeneous perspectives—focuses on the degree to which individuals and social media platforms shape informational segregation. Here, we explore whether news organizations directly contribute to echo chambers through the hyperlinks they embed in online articles. Using network and text analysis, we examined coverage of the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, and found that online news media exhibited weak community structure and high connectivity across news outlets. However, analyses also indicated that media sources were more likely to link to coverage that was similar to their own in terms of emotional valence and stereotype-relevant aspects of the events. While hyperlinking to diverse news sources may ameliorate fragmented information environments, selectively linking to similar coverage may contribute to growing polarization.

scholarly journals Echo Chambers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Anthony Cookson ◽  
Joseph E. Engelberg ◽  
William Mullins
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Trading Volume ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Earnings Announcement ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
Echo Chamber

We find evidence of selective exposure to confirmatory information among 300,000 users on the investor social network StockTwits. Self-described bulls are 5 times more likely to follow a user with a bullish view of the same stock than self-described bears. This tendency is strong even among professional investors and is more pronounced on earnings announcement days. Placing oneself in an information “echo chamber” generates significant differences in the newsfeeds of bulls and bears: over a 50-day period, a bull will see 70 more bullish messages and 15 fewer bearish messages than a bear over the same period. Selective exposure creates “information silos” in which the diversity of received signals is high across users' newsfeeds but is low within users' newsfeeds. Finally, we show that this siloing of information is positively related to trading volume.

Social Media, Participation, and Attitudes

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin W. Holmes ◽  
Ramona Sue McNeal
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Multivariate Regression Analysis ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Series Study

A wide body of evidence shows that the American electorate has become more politically polarized in recent years. There are a wide variety of explanations for this trend, including selective exposure to ideological news sources. This trend corresponds with the increased use of social media for political discussion. There are competing theories regarding whether the spread social media exacerbates or attenuates polarization in the evaluation of political and social groups. The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate these competing claims. This topic is explored using multivariate regression analysis and individual level data from the 2012 American National Election Time Series Study. The findings suggest that social media use actually attenuates rather than drives polarization.

ECHO CHAMBERS AND EPISTEMIC BUBBLES

Episteme ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Thi Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
The Other ◽  
Epistemic Virtue ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Epistemic Structure

ABSTRACTDiscussion of the phenomena of post-truth and fake news often implicates the closed epistemic networks of social media. The recent conversation has, however, blurred two distinct social epistemic phenomena. An epistemic bubble is a social epistemic structure in which other relevant voices have been left out, perhaps accidentally. An echo chamber is a social epistemic structure from which other relevant voices have been actively excluded and discredited. Members of epistemic bubbles lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structure requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one's belief system.

Fake It “Till You Make It”: Debunking Fake News in a Post-Truth America

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-133
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
American People ◽  
Fake News ◽  
News Sources ◽  
The Media ◽  
The U.S

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, attacks on the media have been relentless. “Fake news” has become a household term, and repeated attempts to break the trust between reporters and the American people have threatened the validity of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In this article, the authors trace the development of fake news and its impact on contemporary political discourse. They also outline cutting-edge pedagogies designed to assist students in critically evaluating the veracity of various news sources and social media sites.

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