Echo chamber (media)

In the context of news media and social media, an echo chamber is defined as an environment or ecosystem in which participants encounter beliefs that amplify or reinforce their preexisting beliefs, by communication and repetition inside a closed system and insulated from rebuttal. The echo chambers function by circulating existing views without encountering opposing views, potentially leading to three cognitive biases: correlation neglect, selection bias and confirmation bias. Echo chambers may increase social and political polarization and extremism. On social media, it is thought that echo chambers limit exposure to diverse perspectives, and also favor and reinforce presupposed narratives and ideologies. The term “echo chamber” originally comes from acoustics, where it describes a space in which sound waves bounce around and repeat, amplifying the original noise. In media and communication studies, the term has been adapted to describe environments where ideas and beliefs are repeated and reinforced within a closed system. While the concept existed before the internet, it became much more widely used with the rise of online communication and social media in the early 21st century. Large-scale studies of online behavior show that digital platforms make it easier for people with similar views to group together and interact mostly with each other. This increases the likelihood that users will mainly see information that supports what they already believe. For example, research across multiple platforms shows how interactions among like-minded users help reinforce and spread shared viewpoints (Cinelli et al., 2020). Due to this, the term has become an important part of discussions about political communication, misinformation, and polarization in online spaces. 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 neotribalism. Many...