Testing popular news discourse on the “echo chamber” effect: Does political polarisation occur among those relying on social media as their primary politics news source?

Abstract

Since 2016, online social networks (OSNs), especially their “big data” algorithm, have been intensively blamed in popular news discourse for acting as an echo chamber that entraps like-minded voters in closed ideological circles and engenders political polarisation, with serious damages to democratic processes. This study examines this “echo chamber” argument through the rather divisive case of EU politics among EU citizens. Based on an exploratory secondary analysis of the Eurobarometer 86.2 survey dataset, we investigate whether the reliance on OSNs as a primary EU politics news source can lead people to more polarisation in EU-related political beliefs and attitudes than such reliance on legacy media. We found little evidence of this polarisation, which lends credence to a rejection of the “echo chamber” argument.