Quantifying echo chamber effects in information spreading over political communication networks

Echo chambers in online social networks, in which users prefer to interact only with ideologically-aligned peers, are believed to facilitate misinformation spreading and contribute to radicalize political discourse. In this paper, we gauge the effects of echo chambers in information spreading phenom...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Cota, Wesley, Ferreira, Silvio C., Pastor-Satorras, Romualdo, Starnini, Michele
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repositorio:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10230/72628
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/10230/72628
http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0213-9
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Echo chambers
Computational social science
Information spreading
Online communication networks
Political polarization
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spelling Quantifying echo chamber effects in information spreading over political communication networksCota, WesleyFerreira, Silvio C.Pastor-Satorras, RomualdoStarnini, MicheleEcho chambersComputational social scienceInformation spreadingOnline communication networksPolitical polarizationEcho chambers in online social networks, in which users prefer to interact only with ideologically-aligned peers, are believed to facilitate misinformation spreading and contribute to radicalize political discourse. In this paper, we gauge the effects of echo chambers in information spreading phenomena over political communication networks. Mining 12 million Twitter messages, we reconstruct a network in which users interchange opinions related to the impeachment of the former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. We define a continuous political leaning parameter, independent of the network's structure, that allows to quantify the presence of echo chambers in the strongly connected component of the network. These are reflected in two well-separated communities of similar sizes with opposite views of the impeachment process. By means of simple spreading models, we show that the capability of users in propagating the content they produce, measured by the associated spreading capacity, strongly depends on their attitude. Users expressing pro-impeachment leanings are capable to transmit information, on average, to a larger audience than users expressing anti-impeachment leanings. Furthermore, the users' spreading capacity is correlated to the diversity, in terms of political position, of the audience reached. Our method can be exploited to identify the presence of echo chambers and their effects across different contexts and shed light upon the mechanisms allowing to break echo chambers.We thank Gino Ceotto and Diogo H. Silva for useful discussion. This work was partially supported by the Brazilian agencies CNPq and FAPEMIG. Authors thank the support from the program Ciência sem Fronteiras'CAPES under project No. 88881.030375/2013-01. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior'Brasil (CAPES)'Finance Code 001. MS acknowledges financial support by the J. McDonnell Foundation. RP-S acknowledges financial support from the Spanish MINECO, under Project No. FIS2016-76830-C2-1-P, and additional financial support from ICREA Academia, funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya.Springer2026202620192026info:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersionapplication/pdfapplication/pdfhttps://hdl.handle.net/10230/72628http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0213-9https://hdl.handle.net/10230/72628reponame:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunyainstname:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)InglésEPJ Data Science. 2019;8(1):35info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/1PE/FIS2016-76830-C2-1-PThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessoai:recercat.cat:10230/726282026-05-29T05:05:01Z
dc.title.none.fl_str_mv Quantifying echo chamber effects in information spreading over political communication networks
title Quantifying echo chamber effects in information spreading over political communication networks
spellingShingle Quantifying echo chamber effects in information spreading over political communication networks
Cota, Wesley
Echo chambers
Computational social science
Information spreading
Online communication networks
Political polarization
title_short Quantifying echo chamber effects in information spreading over political communication networks
title_full Quantifying echo chamber effects in information spreading over political communication networks
title_fullStr Quantifying echo chamber effects in information spreading over political communication networks
title_full_unstemmed Quantifying echo chamber effects in information spreading over political communication networks
title_sort Quantifying echo chamber effects in information spreading over political communication networks
dc.creator.none.fl_str_mv Cota, Wesley
Ferreira, Silvio C.
Pastor-Satorras, Romualdo
Starnini, Michele
author Cota, Wesley
author_facet Cota, Wesley
Ferreira, Silvio C.
Pastor-Satorras, Romualdo
Starnini, Michele
author_role author
author2 Ferreira, Silvio C.
Pastor-Satorras, Romualdo
Starnini, Michele
author2_role author
author
author
dc.subject.none.fl_str_mv Echo chambers
Computational social science
Information spreading
Online communication networks
Political polarization
topic Echo chambers
Computational social science
Information spreading
Online communication networks
Political polarization
description Echo chambers in online social networks, in which users prefer to interact only with ideologically-aligned peers, are believed to facilitate misinformation spreading and contribute to radicalize political discourse. In this paper, we gauge the effects of echo chambers in information spreading phenomena over political communication networks. Mining 12 million Twitter messages, we reconstruct a network in which users interchange opinions related to the impeachment of the former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. We define a continuous political leaning parameter, independent of the network's structure, that allows to quantify the presence of echo chambers in the strongly connected component of the network. These are reflected in two well-separated communities of similar sizes with opposite views of the impeachment process. By means of simple spreading models, we show that the capability of users in propagating the content they produce, measured by the associated spreading capacity, strongly depends on their attitude. Users expressing pro-impeachment leanings are capable to transmit information, on average, to a larger audience than users expressing anti-impeachment leanings. Furthermore, the users' spreading capacity is correlated to the diversity, in terms of political position, of the audience reached. Our method can be exploited to identify the presence of echo chambers and their effects across different contexts and shed light upon the mechanisms allowing to break echo chambers.
publishDate 2019
dc.date.none.fl_str_mv 2019
2026
2026
2026
dc.type.none.fl_str_mv info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
format article
status_str publishedVersion
dc.identifier.none.fl_str_mv https://hdl.handle.net/10230/72628
http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0213-9
https://hdl.handle.net/10230/72628
url https://hdl.handle.net/10230/72628
http://dx.doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0213-9
dc.language.none.fl_str_mv Inglés
language_invalid_str_mv Inglés
dc.relation.none.fl_str_mv EPJ Data Science. 2019;8(1):35
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/1PE/FIS2016-76830-C2-1-P
dc.rights.none.fl_str_mv http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights_invalid_str_mv http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
eu_rights_str_mv openAccess
dc.format.none.fl_str_mv application/pdf
application/pdf
dc.publisher.none.fl_str_mv Springer
publisher.none.fl_str_mv Springer
dc.source.none.fl_str_mv reponame:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
instname:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
instname_str Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
reponame_str Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
collection Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
repository.name.fl_str_mv
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