The Echo Chamber: John Boyne

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Powered by John Boyne's characteristic humour and razor-sharp observation, The Echo Chamber is a satiric helter skelter, a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion. In this Q&A with him, the bestselling author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas spoke to The Penguin Post about his favourite book this year, cancel culture and his advice for finding your voice as a writer. There are plenty of genre authors who have done a much better job of examining the nuances around social media, capturing both the absurdity and the dark, real-world consequences of public intrusion into private grief. There is an extensive literature in political science and sociology about the drivers of polarisation, with considerable attention to elite cues from politicians (Rogowski and Sutherland 2016; Iyengar et al. 2012) and to social dynamics including social homophily and various kinds of social sorting – all predominantly rooted in our offline lives, where we work, who we spend time with, where we live (see e.g., Guess et al. 2018; McPherson et al. 2001; Mason 2015). Beyond the definitions we rely on here, the terms “echo chamber” and “filter bubble” are used in a variety of other often broad and ambiguous ways, both by academics and in public debate, and there is limited consensus on singular clear definitions. Levendusky, M. S. (2013). Why do partisan media polarize viewers? American Journal of Political Science, 57(3), 611–623.

Thus, there are distinct questions of outcomes (how many people live in echo chambers versus more diverse media spaces?) and contributing causes (what is the relative importance of active users’ choices versus algorithmic filtering in determining the diversity of sources people access?). Supply, distribution, and demand can all contribute to the formation of echo chambers. What a thing of wonder a mobile phone is. Six ounces of metal, glass and plastic, fashioned into a sleek, shiny, precious object. At once, a gateway to other worlds – and a treacherous weapon in the hands of the unwary, the unwitting, the inept. Nisbet, E. C., Cooper, K. E., & Garrett, R. K. (2015). The partisan brain: How dissonant science messages lead conservatives and liberals to (dis)trust science. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 658(1),36–66.

Williams, H. T. P., McMurray, J. R., Kurz, T., & Lambert, F. H. (2015). Network analysis reveals open forums and echo chambers in social media discussions of climate change. Global Environmental Change, 32, 126–38. When defined as a bounded, enclosed media space that has the potential to both magnify the messages delivered within it and insulate them from rebuttal, studies in the UK estimate that between six and eight percent of the public inhabit politically partisan online news echo chambers.

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 ↑ Yeo, S. K., Xenos, M. A., Brossard, D., & Scheufele, D. A. (2015). Selecting our own science: How communication contexts and individual traits shape information seeking. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 658(1), 172–191. Gentzkow, M., & Shapiro, J. M. (2011). Ideological segregation online and offline. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(4), 1799–1839. We seek to identify (a) areas where we believe there is a clear majority view in academic research, (b) areas where there are some empirical studies but not necessarily convergent interpretations, and (c) areas where there is at this point little evidence to help us understand a situation that is rapidly evolving in terms of both media structure and media substance (as the constant evolution of the digital media environment as well as communications around the coronavirus pandemic has shown). In public and policy debate the term echo chamber is sometimes used interchangeably with the term filter bubble, but it is important to distinguish between the two.Second, the risks associated with people primarily seeking out attitude-consistent information, let alone living in bounded media spaces where their pre-existing views are rarely challenged, can be much smaller than many believe while still being present, and it is clearly possible for people to come to hold very polarised views – sometimes views that are contradicted by the best available scientific research – without living in echo chambers or filter bubbles. Sometimes minorities, however small, play an important role in driving public and policy debate and decision making. (As Guess (2021, p. 12) puts it, in the US context, “even if most Americans do not exist in online echo chambers, they are subject to the political influence of those who do.”) And sometimes confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and social reinforcement from the communities we spent most of our offline lives with will mean we have very strong views, even as we also see a wide range of different kinds of information via news and media.

To understand why algorithmic selection is consistently found to lead to more diverse news diets, not narrower diets (let alone echo chambers), it is important to remember that the median number of different sources of news that people in the UK use on a weekly basis offline is two, and just one online (Newman et al. 2021). Search engines and social media do not vastly expand this number and it is not the case that people who use these platforms have very diverse and balanced news diets. Rather, they lead people to slightly more, and slightly more diverse, sources of news than what they seek out of their own volition. There is evidence for all these, but it is either mixed or exclusively from one country, so we cannot necessarily assume these findings apply everywhere. When it comes to media, there is limited research outside the US and this work does not always find the same patterns as those identified in the US but, at least in the specific context of the United States, it seems that exposure to like-minded political content can potentially polarise people or strengthen the attitudes of people with existing partisan attitudes, and that cross-cutting exposure can potentially do the same for political partisans. Digital media and public discussions around science ↑

There is limited research outside the United States systematically examining the possible role of news and media use in contributing to various kinds of polarisation and the work done does not always find the same patterns as those identified in the US. In the specific context of the United States where there is more research, it seems that exposure to like-minded political content can potentially polarise people or strengthen the attitudes of people with existing partisan attitudes and that cross- cutting exposure can potentially do the same for political partisans. Starbird, K., Arif, A., & Wilson, T. (2019). Disinformation as collaborative work: Surfacing the participatory nature of strategic information operations. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 3(CSCW), article 127. Masip, P., Suau, J., & Ruiz-Caballero, C. (2020). Incidental exposure to non-like- minded news through social media: Opposing voices in echo-chambers’ news feeds. Media and Communication, 8(4), 53–62. Finally, there are many areas where there is at this point little empirical research to help us understand a situation that is rapidly evolving. These include, among other things:

Kim and Lu 2020; Trilling and Schoenbach 2015). As Weeks et al. (2016, p. 263) write of the US context, “although partisans exhibit some preference for like- minded sources, we find no evidence that they avoid disagreeable information but rather continue to rely mostly on a common set of mainstream, general interest news outlets. These more mainstream sources provide information that at times challenges both Republicans’ and Democrats’ positions, yet neither make an attempt to avoid them.” Single-platform studies are, as noted, of limited value in identifying echo chambers, but there are several important studies that identify like-minded communities formed on individual social media platforms – whether through algorithmic selection, self-selection, or some combination thereof (Bakshy et al. 2015; Barberá et al. 2015; Kaiser and Rauchfleisch 2020; Vaccari et al. 2016). Even these, however, often conclude, like Barberá (2015, p. 28), that “most social media users receive information from a diversity of viewpoints.” And in the absence of evidence on what other media the individuals involved use in addition to the social media platform in question, these studies simply cannot establish whether people inhabit a bounded, enclosed media space where specific messages are magnified and insulated from rebuttal. Fletcher, R., & Nielsen, R. K. (2018a). Are people incidentally exposed to news on social media? A comparative analysis. New Media & Society, 20(7), 2450– 2468.In summary, public discussions around science online may exhibit some of the same dynamics as those observed around politics – with an important role for self- selection, elite cues, and small highly active communities with strong views in explaining the dynamics of these debates – but fundamentally, while important studies have been published, mostly from the US, there is at this stage limited empirical research on the possible existence, size, and drivers of echo chambers in public discussions around science. More broadly, years of research document the role political elites play in shaping both news coverage and public opinion around science issues as well. Conclusion ↑ 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. Mason, L. (2013). The rise of uncivil agreement: Issue versus behavioral polarization in the American electorate. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(1), 140–159. Attending McClean’s trial prompted Boyne to give his testimony to the Garda; he can’t say much more about it at the moment, because it is still in their hands. But what was especially striking was the way that Boyne wrote about it, going beyond the horrific nature of the abuse itself to meditate on the effects it has had on his emotional, romantic and sexual life. Recalling relationships that didn’t work and the breakup of his marriage, which he describes to me as the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, he wrote: “The truth is, I’ve failed in every romantic relationship I’ve ever pursued.” In the conversation we have, he talks candidly about how the loss of his husband, with whom he had been in a relationship for 11 years, has “left a scar within me that will never heal”, not least because it was entirely unexpected to him; and about how much he longs for a loving partner to share the life he’s made. Jamieson, K. H., & Cappella, J. N. (2008). Echo chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the conservative media establishment. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.