Social influence and unfollowing accelerate the emergence of echo chambers

Bibliographic Data

ID7539684
AuthorsKazutoshi Sasahara (0000-0003-2572-0648, Japan Science and Technology Agency, corresponding author), Wen Chen (0000-0002-6839-8890, Indiana University Bloomington), Hao Peng (0000-0001-5320-3117, University of Michigan), Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia (0000-0001-5354-9257, University of South Florida), Alessandro Flammini (0000-0003-1670-9156, Indiana University Bloomington), Filippo Menczer (0000-0003-4384-2876, Indiana University Bloomington)
Year2020
Volume4
Issue1
Pages381-402
Publication date2020-09-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Computational Social Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2432-2725 • E-ISSN: 2432-2717
PublisherSpringer Nature (PUBLISHER • SG)
DOI10.1007/s42001-020-00084-7
OpenAlexW3081047394
LanguageEN
Citations received27
References cited71

While social media make it easy to connect with and access information from anyone, they also facilitate basic influence and unfriending mechanisms that may lead to segregated and polarized clusters known as “echo chambers.” Here we study the conditions in which such echo chambers emerge by introducing a simple model of information sharing in online social networks with the two ingredients of influence and unfriending. Users can change both their opinions and social connections based on the information to which they are exposed through sharing. The model dynamics show that even with minimal amounts of influence and unfriending, the social network rapidly devolves into segregated, homogeneous communities. These predictions are consistent with empirical data from Twitter. Although our findings suggest that echo chambers are somewhat inevitable given the mechanisms at play in online social media, they also provide insights into possible mitigation strategies

Dynamics (music · Echo (communications protocol · Homogeneous · Social dynamics · Social influence · Social media · Social network (sociolinguistics · Expert finding and Q&A systems · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence