3w ago

What's even an "Echo Chamber"?

Let's say there is a tulip lovers club, where they talk about tulips, their variations and how to grow them. Let's say someone new joins the club, this new person starts saying that tulips are rubbish and that roses are better or something like that. This person becomes so insistent with these statements that they end up being kicked out of the club. Before leaving, the person calls the club an "Echo Chamber" about tulips.

Would this person be right?

17 comments

no. if it was a generic 'flowers' group that only allowed pro tulip-talk.. thats an echo chamber.
like fox news (fair and balanced politics!)... only spouts pro-conservative nonsense. dissent from that is not allowed, echoing that communication (conservatives good) internally.

It's all about execution everyone should be questioning themselves if they are correct in there thinking and creating an atmosphere of wanting to be proving wrong. If I join the group with an agenda of tearing down the group then no it's not an echo chamber when I get kicked out. But if I join and then notice something about the tulips like they use too much water or are bad for the soil and I bring that evidence with the intent to have a good faith discussion about it. But I'm still kicked out that's is an echo chamber.
- Interesting take. Yeah, if good faith criticism is silenced, it's a clear sign there's something fishy
- the former is always confused for the latter; especially on lemmy.

Sure, from their perspective it's an echo chamber for tulip lovers. In the end it's a subjective pejorative, not necessarily a hard descriptive.
- It also implies that actively ignoring opposing viewpoints is a negative thing.
  There are plenty of negative and harmful things to exclude that don't result in an echo chamber. Excluding nazis for example is not being a real echo chamber because there will never be anything new that could be said to keep it from being a hate based ideology.

This person becomes so insistent with these statements that they end up being kicked out of the club. Before leaving, the person calls the club an "Echo Chamber" about tulips.
Would this person be right?
In theory, yes, that's what it is.
In practice, accusations of being an echo chamber are mostly made against inclusive spaces by people who are upset that they can't air non inclusive opinions
- accusations of being an echo chamber are mostly made against inclusive spaces by people who are upset that they can't air non inclusive opinions.
  And there's where Poppers enters with "You can't be tolerant with the intolerant".
  Although, so any group of people that shares believes is an Echo Chamber regardless?

If you want to read about it, I recommend "echo chambers and epistemic bubbles", by Thi Nguyen. It's a good paper to understand this topic deeply.
Link: https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2018.32

I'm assuming this is meant to be an example of a real-world scenario, and I suspect it would be helpful to hear the actual scenario so that we can comment on the nuances of the specifics rather than wondering if the nuances of the example are relevant or not.
But, to take your example at face value: no, I don't believe the expelled rose-lover is correct about the tulip lover's club being an echo chamber. The tulip lover's club is about tulips... it's in the name, and that's why it's members gather there. The rose-lover is coming in talking off-topic to the point that the members of the tulip lover's club have found it distracting. It's nothing to do with an echo chamber. I would probably expel someone from my chess club if they showed up and constantly tried to get everyone to play monopoly instead.
- The example is completely hypothetical, I wanted to know if a group of people created for a specific purpose or with a specific set of common ideas could be considered an Echo Chamber. And if so, then what wouldn't be an echo chamber?
  
  Gotcha... as you can see, it probably depends on who you ask! "Echo chamber" definitely has a negative connotation, which is why I don't think the specific-purpose group is acting as an echo chamber at least not insofar as they are keeping the group on-topic.

Were they kicked out solely for having a differing opinion? Then it's indisputably an echo chamber
Do the members seldom here opposing opinions outside of strawmen arguments or the occasional troll? Then it's a defacto echo chamber
All organizations with common interests run the risk of becoming one, but the trap is particularly insidious for (and often weaponized by) online communities

On a general note. Older people want to say that social media has an echo chamber effect and reinforces bad beliefs. And you probably hear this from people with all variety of political beliefs.
I've read several studies indicating that's not true. Indicating that people aren't as polarized as others say they are, and also indicating that social media did not lead to greater polarization. But there's tons of data I haven't read, so don't cite me.
Personal knowledge, from both myself and many of my friends, is that before the Web we were far more limited in getting information, which was a problem for people who grew up as minorities, in various ways. And I believe that was a far worse problem than whatever your Facebook group might be causing.

Man there was a video a while back about how echo chambers are actually probably not a huge factor in polarization in and of themselves, but that people are actually polarized when they encounter opinions in ways that drive them away from those opinions. Wish I could find it, it was really compelling and I can't do the topic justice.
- It was on YouTube or anywhere else? Sounds interesting.
  
  YouTube. I'll see if I can find it in my google history or something.

17 comments