Of Echo Chambers and Contrarian Clubs: Exposure to Political Disagreement Among German and Italian Users of Twitter
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Scholars have debated whether social media platforms, by allowing users to select the information to which they are exposed, may lead people to isolate themselves from viewpoints with which they disagree, thereby serving as political “echo chambers.” We investigate hypotheses concerning the circumstances under which Twitter users who communicate about elections would engage with (a) supportive, (b) oppositional, and (c) mixed political networks. Based on online surveys of representative samples of Italian and German individuals who posted at least one Twitter message about elections in 2013, we find substantial differences in the extent to which social media facilitates exposure to similar versus dissimilar political views. Our results suggest that exposure to supportive, oppositional, or mixed political networks on social media can be explained by broader patterns of political conversation (i.e., structure of offline networks) and specific habits in the political use of social media (i.e., the intensity of political discussion). These findings suggest that disagreement persists on social media even when ideological homophily is the modal outcome, and that scholars should pay more attention to specific situational and dispositional factors when evaluating the implications of social media for political communication.
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Studies on social media have found limited evidence for homogeneous clusters on most social media platforms; users may be unlikely to rebroadcast opposing content but are often exposed to it and may respond.
“Studies on social media have found limited evidence for the described homogeneous clusters on most social media platforms: while users may be unlikely to rebroadcast content from the opposing side, they are often exposed to it and may even respond (11, 62–69).”
From How digital media drive affective polarization through partisan sorting (2022) · cites this paper as [67]
The Introduction and Conclusion report that German and Italian Twitter users encountered opposing views, even though homogeneity was the modal outcome. The paper does not establish that homogeneous clusters have limited evidence across most social media platforms, nor do the cited passages assess whether users rebroadcast or respond to opposing content. Our copy provides no page numbers for these passages. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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- Authors
- Vaccari, C., Valeriani, A., Barberá, P., Jost, J. T., Nagler, J., & Tucker, J. A.
- Affiliations
- Royal Holloway University of London (GB)
- University of Bologna (IT)
- University of Southern California (US)
- New York University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Vaccari, Cristian
- ORCID
- Venue
- Social Media + Society
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2016-07
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 3
- ISSN
- 2056-3051 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2529479612
- Cited by
- 188
- References
- 53
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 29 · 2019: 40 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 6
- FWCI
- 54.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Social Media + Society (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (submittedVersion)
- London School of Economics and Political Science Theses Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (submittedVersion)
- Archivio istituzionale della ricerca (Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna) (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Loughborough University Institutional Repository (Loughborough University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Loughborough University Research Repository (Loughborough University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1248077)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Keywords
- echo chambers, political conflict, Twitter, social media, political networks, political communication, offline social networks, Germany, Italy
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