Title
Echo Chambers: Emotional Contagion And Group Polarization On Facebook
Abstract
Recent findings showed that users on Facebook tend to select information that adhere to their system of beliefs and to form polarized groups - i.e., echo chambers. Such a tendency dominates information cascades and might affect public debates on social relevant issues. In this work we explore the structural evolution of communities of interest by accounting for users emotions and engagement. Focusing on the Facebook pages reporting on scientific and conspiracy content, we characterize the evolution of the size of the two communities by fitting daily resolution data with three growth models - i.e. the Gompertz model, the Logistic model, and the Log-logistic model. Although all the models appropriately describe the data structure, the Logistic one shows the best fit. Then, we explore the interplay between emotional state and engagement of users in the group dynamics. Our findings show that communities' emotional behavior is affected by the users' involvement inside the echo chamber. Indeed, to an higher involvement corresponds a more negative approach. Moreover, we observe that, on average, more active users show a faster shift towards the negativity than less active ones.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1038/srep37825
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Field
DocType
Volume
Emotional contagion,Gompertz function,Information cascade,Cognitive psychology,Artificial intelligence,Negativity effect,Logistic regression,Machine learning,Mathematics
Journal
6
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
1
2045-2322
17
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.79
9
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Michela Del Vicario113112.26
Gianna Vivaldo2170.79
Alessandro Bessi31509.87
Fabiana Zollo49210.11
Antonio Scala510012.72
Guido Caldarelli638240.76
Walter Quattrociocchi758242.16