A communication phenomenon called the “echo chamber” could sway federal policymakers’ attitudes toward climate change — and not always in a positive way — according to a study led by university researchers published last month in Nature magazine.
The study, which began in 2010, received survey responses from 64 members of the U.S. climate policy network, including members of Congress and leaders of nongovernmental organizations. The survey polled respondents on their attitudes toward climate science and policy, as well as their sources of expert information.
“Among the science community, there is a consensus that human activities are contributing to global warming. But we were interested to know why in the policy network, half of voters believed climate change was not human-induced,” said Lorien Jasny, a co-author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center in Annapolis.
Similar to sound amplifying in an enclosed space, a communication echo chamber forms when word spreads in a social circle until people hear about the same information from multiple sources and then have the impression that they should believe what they heard, regardless of whether the information is true.
The survey demonstrated that an echo chamber effect had played a significant role in climate policy communications, researchers found.
“Individuals who get their information from the same sources with the same perspective may be under the impression that theirs is the dominant perspective, regardless of what the science says,” Dana Fisher, a sociology professor at this university and a co-author of the study, said in a news release.
The echo chamber demonstrates how outlier views in the science community can spread in the political arena.
“Since this is a new topic, being able to study and evaluate it is also pretty new,” Jasny said. “In our actual research so far, we haven’t found any other examples” of echo chamber studies using exponential random graph models.
Nicholas DiFonzo, a Rochester Institute of Technology psychology professor, wrote about the echo chamber effect in a New York Times column in 2011. He pointed out people live in like-minded social groups, which encourages the formation of consensus.
“Among like-minded people, it’s hard to come up with arguments that challenge the group consensus, which means group members keep hearing arguments only in one direction,” DiFonzo wrote.
The paper was the first study of communication echo chambers using an exponential random graph model.
Fisher, whose research focuses on environmentalism and democracy, said the study’s timing was interesting because the Senate had been considering legislation regulating carbon dioxide emissions when researchers conducted the survey.
“If passed, this bill would have been the first case of federal climate legislation passing through the U.S. Congress,” Fisher said.
Jasny said echo chamber is not exclusive to elite political networks; nor must it be bad. It could exist in other social circles and have a positive impact on communication, she said.
Regular citizens should think critically about information sources to avoid the negative impact of echo chamber, Jasny said.
“It’s important to anyone, regardless what sources they get information from, to find out what their sources get information from,” Jasny said. “To be an educated person, we need to be aware of the effect of echo chamber, and we need to hold policymakers to the same standard.”
