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Online echo chambers are well-studied, concerning spaces that many blame for fostering increased polarization. Given that social media platforms push content and encourage interactions between people who have the same political leanings, it is becoming harder to envision spaces where constructive cross-party-line interactions would take place other than in the form of debate and rageful attacks. Yet recently, scholars have been investigating an online space where something different is happening. Apparently, on a Subreddit (a sub-group within the social media platform, Reddit) entitled “r/news”, scholars found that right- and left-wing people were actively engaging in conversation – and the “chamber” they shared appeared to have little to do with ideology and much to do with demographics.
Scholars from a research institute in Italy analyzed demographic data on age, gender, and affluence - and stated political affiliation - to examine who was speaking with whom on the subReddit platform. They found that political affiliation did not help predict with whom Reddit users were speaking. Looking at active users from 2016 to 2020 talking about news articles published on a variety of topics throughout this period, they found that people tended to speak with others who shared the same level of affluence and age (especially affluence), suggesting that demographics also contribute to increased polarization, and more so than only listening to people of the same ideological positions. In fact, within these demographic groups, people actually sought engagement across ideological lines.
These findings directly contradict the common echo chamber hypothesis – one that is more present on other social media platforms like X and Facebook. It does, however, align with some research that has previously been conducted offline for decades, looking at how geographical space is often segregated across lines of wealth and race especially.
This research could provide insight into the way researchers, content moderators, activists, and others tackle the problem of polarization - by factoring in the demographic composition of digital media spaces and how they may be contributing to the kinds of interactions people are having, and the opinions they are forming.
Monti, C., D’Ignazi, J., Starnini, M., & De Francisci Morales, G. (2023). Evidence of Demographic rather than Ideological Segregation in News Discussion on Reddit. Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2023, 2777–2786. https://doi.org/10.1145/3543507.3583468