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Echo Chambers什么时候有害？

The presence of echo chambers may seem synonymous with their potential ill effects.

回声室的存在表明社会关于给定主题的信念的两极分化状态。当几个社区存在不同的信念时，社交网络就变得两极分化。

当每个信仰社区中的人们主要与其他具有类似信念的人交流时，这些社区被称为回声室。

然而，“回声室现象的强度”的增加并不一定转化为“极化强度”的增加。

信息的可信度

近年来已经观察到的一个众所周知的Echo Chambers在线创建的机制是伪造信息的传播。这样的回声室具有在单独社区中传播给定故事的真实和虚假版本。

Let us assume that, in a given period, true information propagates with a certain level of credibility. When can fake information create more polarization? Is it possible when such information has no credibility?

绝对不会。因此可信度的信息that propagates in a social network is an important characteristic of that information which determines how strongly it will affect future polarization levels.

Findings from polarized climate change tweets

The above contemplations motivated our recentstudypublished inPalgrave Communicationsto research the role of information credibility, focusing on the case of climate change discussion on Twitter.

The most surprising finding from the study is that an increase in homophily in communication, where climate change supporters and skeptics communicate mostly with others having similar beliefs as their own, has led to a decrease in polarization about beliefs concerning the reality of climate change during 2007-2017.

Polarization is measured using the degree of bi-modality of the distribution of emotion-adjusted beliefs. Emotion adjustment is made to incorporate the intensity of an expressed belief in addition to whether the belief supports or disregards that climate change is real.

The interaction effect

The study shows, using a simple model of opinion updating, that increase in homophily interacts with information credibility to drive future polarization trends.

In a regime where fake information does not have credibility, an increase in homophily in communication does not lead to an increase in polarization.

In other regimes where fake information carries at least minimal credibility, polarization can never decrease with an increase in homophily.

结论和观点

The conclusion that emerges from the empirical investigation of tweets and the nature of the interaction effect, as described above, is that climate change skeptic tweets are not credible .

This is because the empirical investigation shows a negative effect of homophily on polarization, which can happen (according to the opinion updating model) only in the case when climate change-skeptic tweets are not credible.

It appears that the study may have spillovers to the broader thought that connects fake information, echo chambers, and polarization. In particular, we probably need to rethink, among others, the following points.

1. 在所有情况下，回声室和极化可能不代表相同的现象。
2. What offline or online factors are the primary drivers of increase in polarization in social media?
3. 假信息的信誉如何启动和发展？