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arXiv 2103.10979cs.SI
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COVID-19背景下的社会化媒体极化和回音室:案例研究

Social Media Polarization and Echo Chambers in the Context of COVID-19: Case Study

Julie Jiang, Xiang Ren, Emilio Ferrara

摘要:

背景:2020年的社交媒体聊天主要由COVID-19疫情主导。现有研究表明,COVID-19话语高度政治化,政治偏好与对病毒的信念和不信念有关。当话题变得政治化时,人们可能会陷入回音室,也就是说,人们只会看到他们已经同意的信息,从而加强了他们的确认偏见。了解信息传播和政治偏好之间的关系对于有效的公共卫生传播至关重要。目的:我们的目的是研究两极分化的程度,并检查美国Twitter上与COVID-19话语相关的回声室结构。研究方法:首先,我们提出了Retweet-BERT,这是一个可扩展且高度准确的模型,用于通过利用语言特征和网络结构来估计用户极性。然后,通过分析Retweet-BERT预测的用户极性,我们提供了新的见解党派用户的特征。结果:我们观察到,右倾用户在生产和消费COVID-19信息时明显更活跃。我们还发现,大多数具有高度影响力的用户都是党派人士,这可能会导致进一步的两极分化。重要的是,虽然左倾和右倾社区都存在回音室,但右倾社区在回音室中的联系要紧密得多,与其他社区隔离开来。结论:我们提供的经验证据表明,政治回声室是普遍存在的,特别是在右倾社区,这可能会加剧暴露于信息符合预先存在的用户的意见。我们的研究结果在发展有效的公共卫生运动和促进网上事实信息的传播方面具有更广泛的意义。

英文摘要:

Background: Social media chatter in 2020 has been largely dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing research shows that COVID-19 discourse is highly politicized, with political preferences linked to beliefs and disbeliefs about the virus. As it happens with topics that become politicized, people may fall into echo chambers, which is the idea that one is only presented with information they already agree with, thereby reinforcing one's confirmation bias. Understanding the relationship between information dissemination and political preference is crucial for effective public health communication. Objective: We aimed to study the extent of polarization and examine the structure of echo chambers related to COVID-19 discourse on Twitter in the United States. Methods: First, we presented Retweet-BERT, a scalable and highly accurate model for estimating user polarity by leveraging language features and network structures. Then, by analyzing the user polarity predicted by Retweet-BERT, we provided new insights into the characterization of partisan users. Results: We observed that right-leaning users were noticeably more vocal and active in the production and consumption of COVID-19 information. We also found that most of the highly influential users were partisan, which may contribute to further polarization. Importantly, while echo chambers exist in both the right- and left-leaning communities, the right-leaning community was by far more densely connected within their echo chamber and isolated from the rest. Conclusions: We provided empirical evidence that political echo chambers are prevalent, especially in the right-leaning community, which can exacerbate the exposure to information in line with pre-existing users' views. Our findings have broader implications in developing effective public health campaigns and promoting the circulation of factual information online.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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