Have you ever had the impression that your social media feed is completely personalized for you and your worldview? Or conversed with a pal who believed that “everyone” shared their viewpoints? It’s possible that you and/or your companion were trapped in an echo chamber. The exact tone and slang used in online communication that is associated with hyperpartisan echo chambers has been found by researchers. Discourse & Society published their findings.
Echo chambers are groups of people that have the same opinions and are frequently virtual environments. They tend to silence dissenting voices and alternative points of view. People are more inclined to believe and spread information in these areas because they may validate their preexisting opinions.
These forums are also a haven for hyperpartisanship, which is typically dogmatic, strongly prejudiced, and hostile to opposing views. It is neither objective nor grounded in reality. Professor Jean E. Fox Tree, the principal author of the new report, said in a statement that hyperpartisan communication is connected to what is referred to as “alternate reality communication.” Urban legends, false information, fake news, and any other sort of information that is exaggerated in any number of ways are examples.
Understanding why this kind of information is so popular is crucial, and one idea puts it down to a common style of communication. As emotional stories are frequently more likely to be remembered than non-emotional ones, strong emotion and displays of in-group status can contribute to the quick dissemination of information. In order to determine whether there is a difference in spontaneous communication—a style of speech that frequently occurs on the fly without the deliberate formulation of the messages—the team examined the linguistic indicators in hyperpartisan and non-hyperpartisan online forums.
According to Allison Nguyen, the primary author of the current study, “people employ spontaneous conversation to generate a sense of personal intimacy, and that can lead to enhanced absorption of information.” Over 47,000 comments from eight political subreddits on Reddit were evaluated by the researchers. Four of these subreddits were labeled as hyperpartisan because they catered to extreme political ideologies (two on the right, two on the left). The study team also took a look at four non-hyperpartisan subreddits that said they wanted to promote debate among users with different points of view.
Overall, the language used in these much politicized forums was frequently exclamation- and swear-filled. Additionally, there were several “I” and “you” pronouns, which contribute to a feeling of familiarity. The dialogues were guided by discourse markers, such as “you know,” “oh,” and “well,” which also served to simulate the sense of face-to-face interaction. Prepositions like “during,” “in,” and “with” were frequently used in these contexts to denote time and place. When compared to non-hyperpartisan subreddits, which had a totally different communication style, there was a clear disparity between the two.
The researchers discovered that the language employed in these settings was more impartial and detached and put more emphasis on precision and proof. Along with third-person pronouns, the predominant punctuation in these areas was third-person pronouns, quote marks, and periods. Many people obtain their news from online sources, so perhaps this study will teach users how to recognize when they are within an online echo chamber or bubble. In order to stop the spread of misinformation, it is crucial to know what to look for and where to exercise caution. In order to determine whether you are in an echo chamber, it may be prudent to consider how often people communicate informally.
