Echo chamber
The phenomenon in which people with similar interests and opinions connect with one another on social media and elsewhere, so that one's own opinions are repeatedly affirmed and reinforced. It is a metaphor drawn from the physical phenomenon of an "echo chamber," a closed room in which sound keeps reverberating, and the problems pointed out are that being surrounded only by similar opinions leads people to mistake them for the mainstream of society and pushes opinions toward more extreme positions.
Origin of the term
The term "echo chamber" originally referred, in acoustics, to a room designed so that sound reverberates well (a reverberation room). The person credited with popularizing it as a metaphor in the context of media and political polarization is the American legal scholar Cass Sunstein. Around 2001, in Republic.com and other works, Sunstein argued that "enclave deliberation," in which only like-minded people discuss things with one another on the internet, makes a group's opinions more extreme, and he spread the concept of the echo chamber in this context.
Difference from the filter bubble
A closely related concept that is often confused with it is the "filter bubble." The filter bubble refers to the state in which recommendation algorithms infer a user's interests and preferentially display information that matches them, so that the user ends up seeing only biased information without intending to. The echo chamber differs in that it is formed by users themselves actively following and connecting with people who share their opinions. It is often summarized as follows: the filter bubble is a passive phenomenon of "becoming biased without knowing it," while the echo chamber is an active phenomenon of joining a homogeneous group by choice. The term "filter bubble" is said to have been coined by the activist Eli Pariser in 2011.
Problems
Being surrounded continuously by the same opinions leads people to mistake their own views for those of the majority of society and lowers their tolerance for differing opinions. It is also pointed out as one cause of political polarization on social media and of conspiracy theories and misinformation spreading and being reinforced within a group without being checked.
To verify
- The exact time and work in which Sunstein first used the term "echo chamber" as a metaphor (the concept is developed across several works from around 2001, so a single first appearance has not been identified)
References
- Mentioned in
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