Echo chamber (media)

In media, an echo chamber is a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an "enclosed" system, where different or competing views are censored, disallowed or otherwise underrepresented.

By participating in an echo chamber, people are able to seek out information that reinforces their existing views without encountering opposing views, potentially resulting in an unintended exercise in confirmation bias. Echo chambers may increase social and political polarization and extremism.

On social media, it is known that echo chambers limit exposure to diverse perspectives, and favour and reinforce presupposed narratives and ideologies. The term is a metaphor based on an acoustic echo chamber, in which sounds reverberate in a hollow enclosure. Another emerging term for this echoing and homogenizing effect within social media communities on the Internet is cultural tribalism.

How it works

Observers of journalism in the mass media describe an echo chamber effect in media discourse. One purveyor of information will make a claim, which many like-minded people then repeat, overhear, and repeat again (often in an exaggerated or otherwise distorted form) until most people assume that some extreme variation of the story is true.

Participants in online communities may find their own opinions constantly echoed back to them, which reinforces their individual belief systems. This can create significant barriers to critical discourse within an online medium. Due to forming friendships and communities with like-minded people, this effect can also occur in real life. The echo chamber effect may also prevent individuals from noticing changes in language and culture involving groups other than their own. Regardless, the echo chamber effect reinforces one's own present world view, making it seem more correct and more universally accepted than it really is. Another emerging term for this echoing and homogenizing effect on the Internet within social communities is cultural tribalism.

Claimed examples of echo chambers

• Facebook
• Quora
• Reddit
• Twitter

See also

• Opinion corridor
• Filter bubble
• Big lie
• Disinformation
• Positive feedback
• Spiral of silence
• Epistemic closure
• Selective exposure theory
• Confirmation bias
• Tribe (internet)
• Hate site

External links

• Philip McRae, "Forecasting the Future Over Three Horizons of Change ", ATA Magazine, May 21, 2010.
• John Scruggs, "The "Echo Chamber" Approach to Advocacy", Philip Morris, Bates No. 2078707451/7452, December 18, 1998.
  • The Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal wonder if they "got it, well, Right".
• "Buying a Movement: Right-Wing Foundations and American Politics," (Washington, DC: People for the American Way, 1996). Or download a PDF version of the full report.
• Dan Morgan, "Think Tanks: Corporations' Quiet Weapon," Washington Post, January 29, 2000, p. A1.
• Jeff Gerth and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "Drug Industry Has Ties to Groups With Many Different Voices", New York Times, October 5, 2000.
• Robert Kuttner, "Philanthropy and Movements," The American Prospect, July 2, 2002.
• Robert W. Hahn, "The False Promise of 'Full Disclosure'," Policy Review, Hoover Institution, October 2002.
• David Brock, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative (New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2002).
• Jeff Chester, "A Present for Murdoch", The Nation, December 2003: "From 1999 to 2002, his company spent almost $10 million on its lobbying operations. It has already poured $200,000 in contributions into the 2004 election, having donated nearly $1.8 million during the 2000 and 2002 campaigns."
• Jim Lobe for Asia Times: "the structure's most remarkable characteristics are how few people it includes and how adept they have been in creating new institutions and front groups that act as a vast echo chamber for one another and for the media"
• Valdis Krebs, "Divided We Stand," Political Echo Chambers
• Jonathan S. Landay and Tish Wells, "Iraqi exile group fed false information to news media", Knight Ridder, March 15, 2004.
• R.G. Keen: The Technology of Oil Can Delays
• Echo chamber at SourceWatch