The echo-chamber effect across social media

Social media may limit the exposure to diverse perspectives and favor the formation of groups of like-minded users framing and reinforcing a shared narrative, that is, echo chambers. However, the interaction paradigms among users and feed algorithms greatly vary across social media.

In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists including ISI Foundation’s researchers Michele Starnini and Gianmarco De Francisci Morales analyzed more than 100 million posts collected between 2010 and 2018 from Facebook, Gab, Reddit, and Twitter about controversial topics, such as abortion, gun control, and vaccination. They found that Facebook and Twitter users are more likely to interact with information disseminated by users with similar viewpoints. On Reddit instead, where users are able to modify their feed algorithms, the echo-chamber effect is absent, suggesting that both user attitudes and platform dynamics influence information dissemination on social media.

“The echo chamber effect on social media”;
Matteo Cinelli, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales, Alessandro Galeazzi, Walter Quattrociocchi, and Michele Starnini. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (9) e2023301118 (2021), 23/02/2021