First, a large number of empirical studies documenting that echo chambers are smaller than commonly assumed, and a growing amount of research rejecting the filter bubble hypothesis should not be confused with a Panglossian belief that we live in the best of all possible worlds or that our increasingly digital, mobile, and platform-dominated media environment does not come with any serious societal challenges. There are many, including the frequently overlooked fact of pronounced inequality in news and information use documented by many of the studies reviewed here, as well as a multitude of others, such as widespread online harassment and abuse, various kinds of misinformation, often invasive data collection by dominant platforms, a serious disruption of the established business of news and market concentration, and many more issues beyond the scope of this review. JB. Read a lot, write every day, and join a writing group. It’s essential to be giving your work to others and listening to their thoughts on it, both positive and negative. Also, you learn so much from reading the work of other students in the class and learning how to discuss it, recognising what it is and isn’t working. Writing isn’t meant to be put in a drawer and forgotten about; it needs an audience.

Thorson, K. (2020). Attracting the news: Algorithms, platforms, and reframing incidental exposure. Journalism, 21(8), 1067–1082. The difference between the two terms is important. 2 An echo chamber is a form of bubble, but the term does not prejudge why some people might live in such bubbles – it is possible, for example, that some actively chose to, that the situation is a result of demand more than distribution or supply. A filter bubble, on the other hand, is an echo chamber primarily produced by ranking algorithms engaged in passive personalisation without any active choice on our part, a possible outcome of specific aspects of how news and information is distributed online. For context, it is important to recognise some basic, often overlooked, descriptive features of contemporary media use.In this literature review we examine, specifically, social science work presenting evidence concerning the existence, causes, and effect of online echo chambers and consider what related research can tell us about scientific discussions online and how they might shape public understanding of science and the role of science in society. Garrett, R. K., Carnahan, D., & Lynch, E. K. (2013). A turn toward avoidance? Selective exposure to online political information, 2004–2008. Political Behavior, 35(1), 113–134. Nelson, J. L., & Webster, J. G. (2017). The myth of partisan selective exposure: A portrait of the online political news audience. Social Media + Society, 3(3). Kim, M., & Lu, Y. (2020). Testing partisan selective exposure in a multidimensional choice context: Evidence from a conjoint experiment. Mass Communication and Society, 23(1), 107–127. Polarisation, in social science, refers to divisions between groups. It can be used to describe a situation where divisions are already sufficiently large to be considered polarised, or a process whereby divisions are becoming larger over time (even though they may still be quite small). Polarisation can take many forms and is not always intrinsically problematic (some things are worth disagreeing over, see Kreiss 2019).

Fletcher, R., Kalogeropoulos, A., & Nielsen, R. K. (2021a). More diverse, more politically varied: How social media, search engines and aggregators shape news repertoires in the United Kingdom. New Media & Society, July. Jang, S. M. (2014). Challenges to selective exposure: Selective seeking and avoidance in a multitasking media environment. Mass Communication and Society, 17(5), 665–688. Evie's need to register many voices also brings forth a diary extract from her mother that neatly conveys the meeting of domestic and political tensions in the final days of British rule, as well as offering more fine descriptions, such as the onset of the harmattan-induced sand-storm. Williams's well-balanced, rhythmic sentences are perfect here for sketching variations in darkness and light. In the literature review we aim to summarise relevant empirical research and clarify the meaning of terms that are used both in public and policy debate and in more specialised scientific research, and not always in the same way. Terms like “echo chamber” and “filter bubble” have exploded into public discourse in recent years and the Hansard official record shows how these terms are increasingly used by elected officials in UK Parliamentary debates. Needless to say, public and political use of these terms are not always aligned with, or based on, scientific work. And even among academic researchers, there is not always a clear consensus on exact definitions of these concepts. 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).

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Whether echo chambers and the like work broadly in the same ways around science issues as around more conventionally political issues. Boxell, L., Gentzkow, M., & Shapiro, J. (2020). Cross-country trends in affective polarization. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Flaxman, S., Goel, S., & Rao, J. M. (2016). Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and online news consumption. Public Opinion Quarterly, 80(S1), 298–320. Garrett, R. K. (2009). Politically motivated reinforcement seeking: Reframing the selective exposure debate. Journal of Communication, 59(4), 676–699.

In terms of distribution, algorithmic selection by digital platforms such as search engines and social media that make personalised display decisions for countless users using automated systems might, some fear, generate filter bubbles by reducing the diversity of information people come across, serving them more attitude- consistent news and resulting in less cross-cutting exposure. There are a number of areas where our review suggests that there is a clear majority view in academic research, including most notably: Abramowitz, A. I. (2011). The disappearing center: Engaged citizens, polarization, and American democracy. Illustrated edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 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. Thus, while we consider findings from the United States, these insights are not universally applicable. We therefore pay particular attention to comparative studies that can help capture differences and similarities across various national contexts and the situation in the United Kingdom specifically.

The Echo Chamber

Cardenal, A. S., Aguilar-Paredes, C., Galais, C., & Pérez-Montoro, M. (2019). Digital technologies and selective exposure: How choice and filter bubbles shape news media exposure. International Journal of Press/Politics, 24(4), 465–486. Adams, J., Green, J., & Milazzo, C. (2012a). Has the British public depolarized along with political elites? An American perspective on British public opinion. Comparative Political Studies, 45(4), 507–530. The role of interest leads us to demand, the final factor we will consider in this section. The main possible causal mechanism here is self-selection: that some people actively opt into echo chambers because they prefer news that aligns with and reinforces their pre-existing views (selective exposure to attitude-consistent information) or actively seek to avoid counter-attitudinal information (selective avoidance of cross-cutting exposure).

Phillips, W., & Milner, R. M. (2017). The ambivalent internet: Mischief, oddity, and antagonism online. Cambridge, and Malden, MA: Polity Press. Furthermore, there are several areas where there are some empirical studies but not necessarily convergent interpretations, or only convergent interpretations supported by data from a single or a few countries. These areas include, most notably: Kreiss, D. (2019). From epistemic to identity crisis: Perspectives on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. International Journal of Press/Politics, 24(3), 383–388. Beam, M. A., Hutchens, M. J., & Hmielowski, J. D. (2018). Facebook news and (de)polarization: Reinforcing spirals in the 2016 US election. Information, Communication & Society, 21(7), 940–958. Commentators and analysts typically worry about echo chambers and filter bubbles because they fear they will fuel polarisation, diminish mutual understanding, and ultimately lead to a situation where people are so far apart that they have no common ground – effectively inhabiting different realities. Polarisation can take substantially different forms. The most important forms for the purposes of this review are the following. First, ideological polarisation, which refers to the degree to which people disagree about political issues. Second, affective polarisation, which refers to people’s feelings about the ‘other side’ – those they disagree with on a given issue. Third, news audience polarisation, which refers to the degree to which audiences for news outlets in a given country are generally more politically partisan or politically mixed.

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Social scientists examine a range of different kinds of polarisation of the public, including ideological polarisation, affective polarisation, and news audience polarisation. As with any attempt to measure a change over time, decisions about what time frame to consider will influence conclusions, and often, there is little consistent data allowing for rigorous longitudinal analysis. JB. These things are generally a mystery. I read voraciously and I write every day and I think when your mind is constantly engaged with fiction, you become better at producing it. I’m an observant person, I think, and stories present themselves to me regularly just in the act of living my life. I keep notebooks filled with ideas, most of which will never come to anything, but there’ll always be one that grows more and more interesting to me and that will become the basis of a novel. JB. Joseph Knox’s True Crime Storyis a hugely original piece of work. The reader is never entirely sure whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. It will certainly be among my favourites of 2021. I’ve also recently discovered Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles, five long novels about a family that starts just before the outbreak of the Second World War, and I’m enjoying them immensely. Fletcher, R., Robertson, C. T., & Nielsen, R. K. (2021b). How many people live in politically partisan online news echo chambers in different countries? Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, 1. Some of the issues we discuss – around echo chambers, polarisation, and inequality – for example, raise moral and political questions and sometimes capture serious societal challenges. Our purpose here is not to outline normative positions on these but to summarise the relevant evidence. This is important to keep in mind because analytical terms such as echo chambers and polarisation often have a negative ring, but their implications of course depend on the substantive nature of the information echoed or the issues that polarise opinion. Basic descriptive facts about media use ↑