TY - GEN
T1 - Blogs are echo chambers
T2 - 42nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS
AU - Gilbert, Eric
AU - Bergstrom, Tony
AU - Karahalios, Karrie
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - In the last decade, blogs have exploded in number, popularity and scope. However, many commentators and researchers speculate that blogs isolate readers in echo chambers, cutting them off from dissenting opinions. Our empirical paper tests this hypothesis. Using a hand-coded sample of over 1,000 comments from 33 of the world's top blogs, we find that agreement outnumbers disagreement in blog comments by more than 3 to 1. However, this ratio depends heavily on a blog's genre, varying between 2 to 1 and 9 to 1. Using these hand-coded blog comments as input, we also show that natural language processing techniques can identify the linguistic markers of agreement. We conclude by applying our empirical and algorithmic findings to practical implications for blogs, and discuss the many questions raised by our work.
AB - In the last decade, blogs have exploded in number, popularity and scope. However, many commentators and researchers speculate that blogs isolate readers in echo chambers, cutting them off from dissenting opinions. Our empirical paper tests this hypothesis. Using a hand-coded sample of over 1,000 comments from 33 of the world's top blogs, we find that agreement outnumbers disagreement in blog comments by more than 3 to 1. However, this ratio depends heavily on a blog's genre, varying between 2 to 1 and 9 to 1. Using these hand-coded blog comments as input, we also show that natural language processing techniques can identify the linguistic markers of agreement. We conclude by applying our empirical and algorithmic findings to practical implications for blogs, and discuss the many questions raised by our work.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=63349085900&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=63349085900&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/HICSS.2009.91
DO - 10.1109/HICSS.2009.91
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:63349085900
SN - 9780769534503
T3 - Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS
BT - Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS
Y2 - 5 January 2009 through 9 January 2009
ER -