The Echo Chamber: John Boyne

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Prior, M. (2013). Media and political polarization. Annual Review of Political Science, 16(1), 101–127. There is also some work on media, including media reporting about polarisation. US studies find that exposure to like-minded partisan media under experimental conditions can strengthen the views of already partisan individuals (Levendusky 2013). Panel survey work, which measures the same people's media use and attitudes at different points in time, has also found that using like-minded partisan media in the US can increase anger toward the ‘other side’ and make people more willing to share political information on social media (Hasell and Weeks 2016). At the same time, cross-cutting exposure, at least on social media, also seems to be able to increase polarisation, at least among political partisans (Bail et al. 2018).

This novel was brilliant. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much whilst reading a book. This is clever humour, heavy on the pop culture and political references, and so in tune Dvir-Gvirsman, S., Tsfati, Y., & Menchen-Trevino, E. (2016). The extent and nature of ideological selective exposure online: Combining survey responses with actual web log data from the 2013 Israeli elections. New Media & Society, 18(5), 857–877. Terms like echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation are widely used in public and political debate but not in ways that are always aligned with, or based on, scientific work. And even among academic researchers, there is not always a clear consensus on exact definitions of these concepts. Furthermore, experimental work finds that exposing people to media coverage about political polarisation may in itself increase perceptions of polarisation and contribute to increased dislike for the opposition (Levendusky and Malhotra 2016).

Not to be overshadowed vocalist extraordinaire Rey Parra shines once again! For the uninitiated Rey used to sing for a little known powerhouse of a band also called Sacred Warrior. His vocals on this album show once again that Rey continues to get better with age. His tone, control, depth and emotion enhance and bring a light to the songs that scream memorable. Adams, J., Green, J., & Milazzo, C. (2012b). Who moves? Elite and mass-level depolarization in Britain, 1987–2001. Electoral Studies, 31(4), 643–655. In summary, the work reviewed here suggests echo chambers are much less widespread than is commonly assumed, finds no support for the filter bubble hypothesis and offers a very mixed picture on polarisation and the role of news and media use in contributing to polarisation. Introduction ↑

Third, given the ease of accessing news online and the abundant supply, differences in individuals’ active choices and regular habits play a defining role in the overall distribution of news use, tending towards greater inequalities, with a large minority of news lovers, about 22% of UK internet users, engaging with many different news sources on a regular basis across many different offline and online platforms, a majority of daily briefers (55%) who use a few different sources of news and a large minority of more casual users (23%) who often do not access news daily. Differences in news use are partially aligned with differences in age, gender, education, and income, both in general (Kalogeropoulos and Nielsen 2018) and around, for example, coronavirus information (Fletcher et al. 2020b). First, a large number of empirical studies documenting that echo chambers are smaller than commonly assumed, and a growing amount of research rejecting the filter bubble hypothesis should not be confused with a Panglossian belief that we live in the best of all possible worlds or that our increasingly digital, mobile, and platform-dominated media environment does not come with any serious societal challenges. There are many, including the frequently overlooked fact of pronounced inequality in news and information use documented by many of the studies reviewed here, as well as a multitude of others, such as widespread online harassment and abuse, various kinds of misinformation, often invasive data collection by dominant platforms, a serious disruption of the established business of news and market concentration, and many more issues beyond the scope of this review. Gentzkow, M., & Shapiro, J. M. (2011). Ideological segregation online and offline. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(4), 1799–1839.JB. These things are generally a mystery. I read voraciously and I write every day and I think when your mind is constantly engaged with fiction, you become better at producing it. I’m an observant person, I think, and stories present themselves to me regularly just in the act of living my life. I keep notebooks filled with ideas, most of which will never come to anything, but there’ll always be one that grows more and more interesting to me and that will become the basis of a novel. Scheufele, D. A., Jamieson, K. H., & Kahan, D. M. (2017). Conclusion – on the horizon: The changing science communication environment. In K. H. Jamieson, D. M. Kahan, & D. A. Scheufele (eds.), The Oxford handbook on the science of science communication, 461–467. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dalton, R. J. (2006). Social modernization and the end of ideology debate: Patterns of ideological polarization. Japanese Journal of Political Science, 7(1), 1–22. Martin, G. J., & McCrain, J. (2019). Local news and national politics. American Political Science Review, 113(2), 372–384. Polarisation, in social science, refers to divisions between groups. It can be used to describe a situation where divisions are already sufficiently large to be considered polarised, or a process whereby divisions are becoming larger over time (even though they may still be quite small). Polarisation can take many forms and is not always intrinsically problematic (some things are worth disagreeing over, see Kreiss 2019).