Why We Create Small-World Echo Chambers

Hey there!

Today I'll start going over small-world networks and how they shape things like "sense of community" and the perception of truth. A lot of this is what's influencing online community behaviors today (and subsequently, business).

As mentioned in my article shared yesterday, small-world networks are a type of mathematical graph in which most nodes are not neighbors of one another, but those same nodes can be reached from every other by a small number of "hops" or steps.

This is similar to when you meet a friend, or a friend-of-a-friend, in some seemingly random place you wouldn't expect to. Whether locally in your own city, or internationally in another country. It is the effect of a network that often causes you to go, "Wow, what a small world!"

Many social networks (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) are designed with this small-world network effect in mind. On the plus side, small-world networks enable you to feel a 'sense of community,' regardless of where you are. On the negative side, small-world networks can create unintended consequences like:

1. Echo chambers

2. Confirmation bias

3. Mob mentality (extreme)

Echo Chambers

An echo chamber is what you get when someone says, "you live in a bubble." It's when someone considers your views to be so narrow-minded, or at odds with theirs, that your views are justified to them as being limited to a particular sphere of thought. According to Oxford, it is defined as "an environment in which somebody encounters only opinions and beliefs similar to their own, and does not have to consider alternatives."

According to research from Axel Bruns from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), echo chambers aren't simply influenced by platform choices.² Multiple factors - from naturally following like-minded peers to being exposed to attitude-reinforcing content based on algorithms - have a part to play.

So although public platforms like Twitter may expose you to a wide range of options, you may naturally seek out people and content that is self-reinforcing, leading to self-constructed echo chambers.

Tomorrow, we'll dive into confirmation bias.

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