Twitter Study Suggests Complicated Relationship Between Social Media and “Echo Chamber” Behavior
Article: http://phys.org/news/2015-08-political-polarization-twitter-issue.html
Study: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/08/21/0956797615594620.abstract
It has long been speculated that the internet contributes to political polarization through the creation of “echo chambers,” communities where especially like-minded people listen to and perpetuate their own beliefs to the point of isolating themselves from the mainstream way of thinking. Popular social media sites have often been accused of creating these same “echo chambers” within their social networks and fostering ideological self-segregation. However, a recent study from NYU suggests that this is not always the case.
With data compiled from over 150 million tweets across 3.8 million accounts, the study found an interesting relationship between the type of news people were looking for and who they get it from. Although people tended to follow the “echo chamber” pattern of finding their news for more divisive topics, the study also established that, for less divisive subjects, people had no difficulty sharing and exchanging news and information across ideological lines. Additionally, despite there being “echo chamber” patterns of communication for more polarized topics, people were never completely cut off from differing opinions. As co-author Joshua A. Tucker concluded, “Even for the most divisive topics, such as the 2012 presidential election, we did not see a perfect division on Twitter – while people may encounter political views that they agree with, they’ll encounter divergent opinions as well”.
While these trends could be described by many different principles, some of the the ideas discussed in class offer a very useful conceptual frameworks to explain these trends. For example, the distinction in the data between divisive and non-divisive subjects could be explained by the difference in strong and weak connections compared to positive and negative ones. For controversial topics where people are very divided it may be best to model communication as a large, unbalanced network with positive and negative edges. Even if it might not be possible to completely divide people into opposing groups like in a balanced network, it is still apparent that factors like confirmation bias play a large role in how these polarized groups communicate. On the other hand, a model with strong and weak connections fits better in cases where people are less divided. As we discussed in class, a disproportionately large amount of people’s news actually comes from their less strongly connected friends who might not necessarily be in their immediate social circles. While more touchy information might not be spread through weak ties due to ideological differences, in the case of less polarized topics people will readily accept and share news from those they do not always agree with, which follows with the idea of the Strength of Weak Ties.