Echo Chamber Effect

Overview

In communications theory and related disciplines, the “echo chamber” is a metaphor used to describe a condition in which an individual’s beliefs, views, and assumptions are reinforced as the result of the stimuli to which the reader/viewer is exposed. In an echo chamber, specific beliefs or ideas are transmitted to the individual that are principally associated with individuals and groups with which that individual already shares significant beliefs, values, or a shared sense of identity. In recent years, the impact of the internet (including both formal news outlets that publish their content online and communication with others via social media) and partisan news have been discussed in terms of their contribution to echo chambers and cultural “tribalism.”

Tribalism in this sense refers to the growth of insulated communities, especially communities bound by factors other than the geographical, in which certain ideas and beliefs are held in common and reinforced. When a larger community—such as a nation—consists of especially strictly delineated tribal groups, the result is increasing polarized political discourse, in which common ground becomes more difficult to find. In a polarized society, people differ not only in their views of the best solutions to social issues but also in the underlying narratives they accept as factual. These opposing versions of the truth extend to people’s beliefs about the condition of the world. Especially loyal members of such tribes evaluate new information less on objective merits and more on how well it adheres to already held beliefs. In the twenty-first century, climate change, vaccination, and the Holocaust became subjects of controversy about which the facts behind each were perceived as either settled or suspect.

The rise of the echo chamber effect and related concerns is directly related to changes to the media landscape in the twenty-first century. When modern American political culture formed, information sources were relatively limited, albeit diverse and deep compared with earlier eras. The average American had access to a small number of national television and radio networks and a handful of national news magazines. Local newspapers and news programs addressed both local concerns and national or international news from a local angle. This doesn’t mean that substantial differences in media consumption and access did not exist; throughout much of the twentieth century, but especially before the 1980s or so, there were significant differences: The average Southerner watching the news or reading the newspaper was exposed to a very different narrative about the civil rights movement, for example, compared with media consumers in other regions or countries.

The media landscape in the twenty-first century is different in ways that directly influence the likelihood of echo chambers. First, the sheer number of media sources dwarfs that of previous decades. Even when considering only traditional media, the number of television channels and networks has grown so much that it is unreasonable to expect the average person to even name most of them, let alone watch them on a regular basis; in the past there were so few that it was reasonable to expect that most Americans were familiar not only with every network but also with the major programs on each. On top of that, “television” now includes a number of streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu, which have become the principal form of television consumption for a growing portion of the population and which further reduce the extent of the television common ground.

The internet is generally held to be the biggest factor in making echo chambers likelier in the twenty-first century, by changing the way media is accessed and the way people engage in selecting media. In the past, the process of selecting media was straightforward: television and radio were broadcast on a specific schedule and the individual could choose which program to watch at a predetermined time; VCRs, allowing programs to be recorded, allowed time-shifting but otherwise had little impact on this scheme. Similarly, newspapers and magazines were published on a specific schedule, and only a handful were easily available. Accessing content online is superficially simple for the consumer but much technologically more complex in its methods and results. Algorithms determine which content is displayed to the individual, and in what order, based on a sophisticated profile that hazards guesses about content preferences based on previous browsing activity and demographic information. Every link that is clicked and read affects which stories the individual is most likely to see in the future. This also affects the advertisements that are displayed to individuals when logged in to browsers, social media, or other services, even when they are viewing unrelated sites.

On the one hand, this sort of personalization replicates a phenomenon that happens anyway: when people read a story online, they’re more likely to share it if they agree with it (or have a strong negative reaction to it), and people tend to have friends with similar views, which means they are likely to see stories shared in social media that they are primed to find appealing. When the internet becomes a primary means of media consumption, this kind of personalization first contributes to, and then exacerbates and maintains, the echo chamber effect.

Further Insights

Echo chambers should not be seen as a problem simply impacting “the general public,” independent of policy. Even apart from the demonstrable effect of information access on voting and political affect, echo chambers impact policy makers as well. At least one study has found evidence of echo chambers with significant impact among policy makers working on environmental and climate policies in the United States (Jasny et al, 2018).

The echo chamber effect is an extension of confirmation bias, a cognitive bias that has been studied since the 1960s. An error in inductive reasoning, confirmation bias is the tendency of an individual to favor information that confirms preexisting beliefs. That favoring takes a number of forms, including the individual being more likely to look for such information, being more likely to read articles or watch news stories that suggest they will confirm existing beliefs, being more likely to remember facts that support those beliefs, and assigning greater weight to the evidence in favor of those beliefs than the evidence against them. Ambiguous information will be interpreted to support preexisting beliefs. A common example of this is extreme winter weather, such as record cold temperatures or significant snowfall in southern or mid-Atlantic states that usually have mild winters. While such extreme climate events are actually part of the climate change model, it is common for climate change skeptics to point to them as evidence that global warming is a hoax. Confirmation bias explains a number of behaviors, including an individual holding on to an opinion even when available evidence suggests or proves its falsehood, and why two people with access to the same information can nevertheless hold contradictory beliefs.

Sociologists and political scientists also talk about reinforcement theory, a model of behavior related to the confirmation bias. Reinforcement theory has the same central claim as the confirmation bias—that people will seek, identify, and recall information that supports their preexisting beliefs. It also deals with behavior, and with the mechanisms behind it: selective exposure, selective perception, and selective retention. Selective exposure is the phenomenon of people being drawn toward information that rewards them by confirming their existing beliefs, and avoiding the unpleasant feeling of having their beliefs contradicted; even without the guidance of algorithms influencing internet engagement, people tend to steer away from things that indicate they are wrong. Selective perception is the mechanism engaged when that contradictory information cannot be avoided: the information may be misread or misunderstood in such a way that its relevance to the individual’s existing beliefs is diminished. Selective retention is the tendency to more easily forget the things that contradict existing beliefs. While people take in a great deal of information, the retention of that information is mediated according to the feelings it produces more so than how important the factual details will be to remember later.

There are a number of real-world scenarios that are used as case studies of reinforcement theory or confirmation bias. One of the best known, because the general public’s familiarity with the history makes it a useful illustration, is the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, in which a CIA-sponsored counter-revolutionary group undertook a failed invasion of Cuba with the goal of overthrowing Fidel Castro’s government. In hindsight, it is clear that the invasion had little chance of success. Furthermore, it is just as clear that well-informed experts at the time had more than sufficient information to know the invasion was not likely to succeed—it did not fail because of factors only revealed later, in other words. Historians and sociologists point to the way President John F. Kennedy’s advisers interacted with him, exaggerating some points of data while downplaying others in a way that seems to have been designed—likely unconsciously—to please the president by providing him with the answers he was looking for, rather than to provide him with an accurate picture of the facts with no concern for the emotional impact. The plan was faulty from the beginning, but the decision-making process had been shaped by selective perception and confirmation bias. Most models of reinforcement theory are grounded in the work of social psychologist Leon Festinger, who proposed the idea of cognitive dissonance in 1957. Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling an individual experiences in response to conflicting thoughts or beliefs—such as, in reinforcement theory, new information that conflicts with long- or strongly-held beliefs.

The sheer volume of information disseminated on the internet can also result in a similar effect, especially in reporting on current events, called “false confirmation” or “circular reporting.” False confirmation is a phenomenon in which a piece of information seems to be reported by multiple sources—making it seem more credible—when there is actually only one source. False confirmation is a problem in several fields, from military intelligence to scholarly research, but in casual online news reading, it is often the result of multiple outlets reporting a story, all of them drawing on the same original source without independent confirmation. This artificially amplifies stories that might have little actual support. Such amplification makes individuals more likely to believe the stories, a phenomenon called communal reinforcement, in which the repetition of a story, belief, or idea within a community contributes to its acceptance, rather than the reliability of the evidence. Certain beliefs stemming from unsupported reports—that vaccination is linked to autism, that voter fraud is widespread—have spread not because of a compelling case based on a presentation of facts, but because the claim has been repeated so many times within certain communities.

Issues

The echo chamber effect has been blamed for a number of recent political events, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom. It is also a factor in the growth of insular hate groups, such as self-described involuntary celibates (“incels”) among online communities. Social media promotes a general tendency toward political homophily (surrounding oneself primarily with people who have similar political beliefs), and informational bias among groups of peers (Cinelli et al, 2021). The echo chamber effect is strongest on social media sites that rely on algorithms to feed user content. Social media users tend to prefer information that conforms to their preexisting viewpoints and ignore dissenting information. This makes them more likely to join with like-minded individuals to form polarized groups. The echo chamber effect is prolific among social media users, although different platforms were found to have more bias toward certain political beliefs. For example, Facebook and Twitter users who believed in a particular ideology were more likely to be targeted by content that fit that ideology, while Reddit tended to have more liberal content and Gab skewed more conservative (Cinelli et al, 2021).

Because of “false consensus bias,” it can be difficult for an individual in an echo chamber to recognize when a belief held within the echo chamber is not more generally held or even seriously entertained by the majority. The false consensus bias causes people to overestimate how widespread their own beliefs, views, and other affects are. It can have many underlying causes and is found in people of a wide variety of personality types. The false consensus bias is both fed by and feeds the echo chamber, preserving the illusion that most other people agree and that dissenting voices are few and “outside”; the selective exposure of the echo chamber in turn seems to validate the claims of the false consensus bias.

Because contemporary discourse about the echo chamber effect focuses so often on the role of the internet, it overlaps with the concept of the “filter bubble”: the information-access isolation resulting from personalized search and surfacing algorithms. The filter bubble has been discussed since the 2000s, with the term being coined by Eli Pariser prior to the publication of his book by the same name in 2011. The differences in search results are often harmless or even useful: based on geography, demographics, and previous searches, the first search result for “Neighbors” may be the 2014 Seth Rogen film for one user (an established Seth Rogen fan), the 2012 sitcom for another user (a science fiction fan), or the Australian soap opera for another. These differences are what make the voluminous search results navigable, especially when search terms include such common words. Where filter bubbles become problematic is when the information favored by that bubble is misleading or outright false but its credibility is supported by the perceived authority of an echo chamber. A search for “9/11,” for example, may lead to conspiracy theory videos. “Pizzagate” may lead not to a neutral source explaining the conspiracy theory and its role in motivating the 2016 Comet Ping Pong shooting, but to multiple pages promoting and defending the theory. Attempts by social media companies to fact-check or otherwise improve the results returned by searches have been controversial at best and rarely hailed as a success.

The echo chamber effect is often pointed to in discussions of “post-truth” or “post-factual” politics, the political culture hypothesized to have become ascendant prior to the 2016 elections. In a post-truth political culture, appeals to emotion and the validation of preexisting beliefs are more powerful tools than evidence-driven reporting, and “conspiracism” is rampant. A key example of the rise of post-truth politics is the 2016 presidential debates. Donald Trump lost all three debates according to scientific polling, but went on to win the election. What is significant is not that Trump lost the debates, but that he made only a token effort at participating in a conventional debate, instead using the forum to broaden and solidify his appeal with voters who responded strongly to his confident disregard of scientific and historical “facts” in favor of emotional and culturally rooted beliefs.

Bibliography

Boutyline, A., & Willer, R. (2017). The social structure of political echo chambers: Variation in ideological homophily in online networks. Political Psychology, 38(3), 551–569. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=122941579&site=ehost-live

Cinelli, M., De Francisci Morales, G., Galeazzi, A., Quattrociocchi, W., & and Starnini, M. (2021, February 23). The echo chamber effect on social media. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(9), doi.org/10.1073/pnas.202330111

Dreier, P., & Martin, C. R. (2011). The news media, the conservative echo chamber, and the battle over Acorn: How two academics fought in the framing wars. Humanity & Society, 35(1/2), 4–30. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=59902834&site=ehost-live

Dubois, E., & Blank, G. (2018). The echo chamber is overstated: The moderating effect of political interest and diverse media. Information, Communication & Society, 21(5), 729–745. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=128003583&site=ehost-live

Flaxman, S., Goel, S., & Rao, J. M. (2016). Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and online news consumption. Public Opinion Quarterly, 80, 298–320. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=114678730&site=ehost-live

Jasny, L., Dewey, A. M., Robertson, A. G., Yagatich, W., Dubin, A. H., Waggle, J. M., & Fisher, & D. R. (2018). Shifting echo chambers in US climate policy networks. PLoS ONE, 13(9), 1–18. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=131783014&site=ehost-live

Panke, S., & Stephens, J. (2018). Beyond the echo chamber: Pedagogical tools for civic engagement discourse and reflection. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 21(1), 248–263. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Education Source Ultimate http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=127424795&site=ehost-live

Usher, N., Holcomb, J., & Littman, J. (2018). Twitter makes it worse: Political journalists, gendered echo chambers, and the amplification of gender bias. International Journal of Press/Politics, 23(3), 324–344. Retrieved September 15, 2018, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=130723440&site=ehost-live