Accepted for/Published in: JMIRx Med
Date Submitted: Apr 12, 2021
Date Accepted: Jun 24, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Aug 4, 2023
Social media polarization and echo chambers: A case study of COVID-19
ABSTRACT
Background:
During 2020, social media chatter has been largely dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing research shows that COVID-19 discourse is highly politicized, with political preferences linked to beliefs and misbeliefs about the virus. Understanding the relationship between information dissemination and political preference is crucial for effective public health communication.
Objective:
Our objective in this paper is to study the extent of polarization and examine the structure of echo chambers related to COVID-19 discourse on Twitter in the U.S.
Methods:
We first propose Retweet-BERT, a scalable and highly accurate model for estimating user polarity by leveraging language features and network structures. Then, by analyzing the user polarity predicted by Retweet-BERT, we provide new insights into the characterization of partisan users.
Results:
Right-leaning users, we find, are noticeably more vocal and active in the production and consumption of COVID-19 information. We also show that most of the highly influential users are partisan, which may contribute to further polarization. Importantly, while echo chambers exist in both the right- and left-leaning communities, the right-leaning community is by far more densely connected within their echo chamber and isolated from the rest.
Conclusions:
We provide empirical evidence that political echo chambers are prevalent, especially in the right-leaning community, which can exacerbate the exposure to information in line with pre-existing users' views. Our findings have broader implications in developing effective public health campaigns and promoting the circulation of factual information online. Clinical Trial: None
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