06/02/17 - Twitter accounts really are echo chambers, study finds (43)

06/02/17 - Twitter accounts really are echo chambers, study finds (43)

The phrase, 'birds of a feather flock together,' really does come across as being true when politics and the internet are in mind. Research on 2000 of the most politically engaged Twitter users identifying as supporters of one of the major UK political parties (by thinktank Demos) represented exactly this, with them being most likely to interact with other users supporting the same party or share articles that align with the same views as them. Report author Alex Krasodomski-Jones believes that this kind of behaviour that we see is exacerbated through how media outlets now will use more polarising views to attract audiences. Rather than just focus on stories with a neutral standpoint, 'this attention economy, vying for clicks, eyeballs, pushes people into very confirmatory outlets,' helping contribute to the number of alternative news stories which are 'ideologically driven' more than anything. Things like this can be seen with Ukip supporters accounting for more than half of all the linke posted for articles from the Daily Mail, Sun and Guido Fawkes websites. Cognitive scientist at Sheffield University, Tom Stafford, makes mention of this concept of homophily, saying that it applies to the media as much as it does in person. With this interaction between rival party supporters can already be seen as being quite infrequent.   

• Labour supporters were weighted more heavily towards the Guardian, Independent, New Statesman, Mirror and Huffington Post (centre-left or leftwing) which accounted for 82% of shares from LabourList
• More than three-quarters of retweets from SNP supporters and 73% of those from Ukip supporters were of someone from their own party
• The highest proportion of one party retweeting supporters of another – 32% – was between Tories and Ukip supporters

This article actually works to confirm this idea that social networks, this time Twitter in particular, are just echo chambers. It's viewed more as an avenue predominantly for people that share the same political views to communicate with each other rather than question them through talking to rival supporters. It's likely that this will in fact never change, and this concept of homophily is something that'll need to be mentioned as the main reason as to why this occurs. People like to hear what they want to hear, so it's natural that what they interact with is what matches up with their viewpoints.