Article published In:
Argumentation in political deliberationEdited by Marcin Lewiński and Dima Mohammed
[Journal of Argumentation in Context 2:1] 2013
► pp. 127–150
Edited by Marcin Lewiński and Dima Mohammed
[Journal of Argumentation in Context 2:1] 2013
► pp. 127–150
(How) do participants in online discussion forums create ‘echo chambers’?
The inclusion and exclusion of dissenting voices in an online forum about climate change
This paper examines the proposition advanced by Sunstein (2001) and other scholars that political online forums tend to be characterized by in-group homogeneity and group polarization. The paper adopts a process view of online forums and examines discussions within a time perspective. Five discussion lines on Climategate.nl (a skeptical Dutch online forum on climate change) are investigated. The research focuses on how participants react to the participation of dissidents and on the resulting processes of inclusion and exclusion. Climategate.nl moved in the direction of an ‘echo chamber’ gradually over time. Nevertheless, the forum was never completely homogeneous. The editors played an active role in the inclusion and exclusion of dissidents. A counter-steering moderation policy is needed to keep group polarization and homogenization within certain limits.
Cited by
Cited by 19 other publications
Baele, Stephane J., Lewys Brace, Travis G. Coan & Elahe Naserian
2023. Super- (and hyper-) posters on extremist forums. Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism 18:3 ► pp. 243 ff. 
Bartal, Alon, Nava Pliskin & Gilad Ravid
2019. Modeling influence on posting engagement in online social networks: Beyond neighborhood effects. Social Networks 59 ► pp. 61 ff.
Bondi, Marina & Leonardo Sanna
2022. Chapter 7. Exploring the echo chamber concept. In Conspiracy Theory Discourses [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 98], ► pp. 143 ff.
Bright, Jonathan
2016. Explaining the Emergence of Echo Chambers on Social Media: The Role of Ideology and Extremism. SSRN Electronic Journal
Cinelli, Matteo, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales, Alessandro Galeazzi, Walter Quattrociocchi & Michele Starnini
2021. The echo chamber effect on social media. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118:9
Doudaki, Vaia & Nico Carpentier
2023. A social mapping of Swedish environment-focussed Facebook groups: The principles, methods and implementation of a mapping project. Telematics and Informatics 83 ► pp. 102021 ff.
Essebo, Maja
2022. Storying COVID-19: fear, digitalisation, and the transformational potential of storytelling. Sustainability Science 17:2 ► pp. 555 ff.
Garimella, Kiran, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales, Aristides Gionis & Michael Mathioudakis
2018. Proceedings of the 2018 World Wide Web Conference on World Wide Web - WWW '18, ► pp. 913 ff.
Hemsley, Jeff, Martha Garcia‐Murillo & Ian P. MacInnes
2018. Tweets That Resonate: Information Flows and the Growth of Twitter's Universal Basic Income Discussion Space. Policy & Internet 10:3 ► pp. 324 ff.
Holder, Faye, Sanober Mirza, Namson-Ngo-Lee, Jake Carbone & Ruth E. McKie
2023. Climate obstruction and Facebook advertising: how a sample of climate obstruction organizations use social media to disseminate discourses of delay. Climatic Change 176:2
Icks, Martijn & Eric Shiraev
2021. Having the Last Laugh: Scandalous Character Assassination in Comedy in Classical Athens and the Current-Day United States. In Scandology 3, ► pp. 135 ff.
Jachna, Timothy
2021. Public Space, the Public Realm and Digital Technologies. In Wiring the Streets, Surfing the Square [The Urban Book Series, ], ► pp. 23 ff.
Kühnel, Jana, Tim Vahle-Hinz, Jessica de Bloom & Christine J. Syrek
2020. Staying in touch while at work: Relationships between personal social media use at work and work-nonwork balance and creativity. The International Journal of Human Resource Management 31:10 ► pp. 1235 ff.
Morrison, James
2021. “Scrounger-bashing” as national pastime: the prevalence and ferocity of anti-welfare ideology on niche-interest online forums. Social Semiotics 31:3 ► pp. 383 ff.
Parra, Carlos M., Manjul Gupta & Patrick Mikalef
2021. Information and communication technologies (ICT)-enabled severe moral communities and how the (Covid19) pandemic might bring new ones. International Journal of Information Management 57 ► pp. 102271 ff.
Reamer, Marcus B.
2022. Communicating ocean and human health connections: An agenda for research and practice. Frontiers in Public Health 10
Rossette-Crake, Fiona
2022. Oratory as Social Practice (I): Discursive Genre, Culture, and Power. In Digital Oratory as Discursive Practice [Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse, ], ► pp. 153 ff.
Tommasel, Antonela, Juan Manuel Rodriguez & Daniela Godoy
2021. Fifteenth ACM Conference on Recommender Systems, ► pp. 23 ff.
van Eck, Christel W., Bob C. Mulder & Sander van der Linden
2021. Echo Chamber Effects in the Climate Change Blogosphere. Environmental Communication 15:2 ► pp. 145 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.