Presentation from IAMCR 2017, initial findings.

1. Examining the Social Media
Echo Chamber
Dr Megan Knight
University of Hertfordshire
m.knight3@herts.ac.uk @meganknight
http://meganknight.uk

2. Fake news, echo chambers and bubbles
• The idea that social media and new media creates echo chambers is
not new, but the surprising results of the UK European Union
Membership referendum and the election of Donald Trump has
created new focus on whether social media are creating more and
more insular audiences and political groupings.
• There has since been a lot of punditry on the linked issues of “fake
news” and echo chambers, and a considerable move towards blaming
social media for increased radicalisation and extremism in many
areas.

3. Is this the case?
• Political change and movements are subtle and the result of many
factors: no single entity can be determined to be responsible for
political change.
• The Internet is broader than social media, and fringe sites/products
such as Reddit and 4Chan are seldom discussed.
• Traditional media is also an echo chamber.

4. However
• Facebook is the largest single site on the Internet, with more than 2
billion registered users.
• In the developed world, more than 60% of users get some news from
Facebook, and for 40% it is their primary source of news.
• News organisations publish stories direct to Facebook, and many view
it as a primary distribution and engagement platform.
• Political parties and activist groups use Facebook as a means to
communicate directly with supporters (bypassing the traditional
media entirely).

5. Facebook is under-researched
• There is little research published on news content on Facebook,
especially as compared to Twitter
• Facebook is less accessible to researchers than Twitter, and the API is
less accommodating of research
• Facebook is different for every user, and it is very difficult to speculate
as to what users see
• Until recently, Facebook was seen as purely social, a place for friends
to communicate

6. The project – initial iteration.
• To examine the Facebook content shared, liked and posted by users,
to determine:
• How much news content there is
• How much political and social campaigning there is
• To correlate that with self-declared levels of interest in and
awareness of current affairs
• Two weeks prior to UK election on June 8th.
• Using a self-developed Facebook App.

7. Limits of the data
• Facebook’s API limits access to:
• User profile data (self-reported age, gender, political leanings, religion and
other aspects)
• 25 most recent posts (including shared posts)
• 25 most recent likes
• 25 most recent news articles read (reads)
• News articles are posts created by organisations explicitly calling themselves “news
organisations” – this is not vetted by Facebook.

8. Initial findings
• 92 respondents
• Average age 29, median age 25
• 17% considered themselves well-informed on current affairs, 83% did
not
• 87% intended to vote (of those eligible), 98% were certain, or
reasonably certain who they would vote for

9. Initial findings
• 493 news articles (of a potential 2300)
• 473 from mainstream news orgs
• 2097 “likes”, of which 10% are newsmedia, political campaigns or
social campaigns
• 2150 posts, of which 5% expressed political or social opinions, only
one news article was shared.
• Meme sites were the most commonly shared and liked content, of
which 5% had political or social content

10. Tentative conclusions
• Users do not commonly engage with news or current affairs
information on the platform
• What content is engaged with, it tends to lean progressive, and
animal rights and environmentalism are more popular than other
progressive issues (this is very preliminary)
• There is no evidence of fake news, or extreme views (except for one
apparently unironic Stalinist site)
• Dominant content types were memes and jokes, especially those
focusing on “lad culture”