Why Echo Chambers are Useful

Christoph Schottmüller

VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: Why do people appear to forgo information by sorting into 'echo chambers'? We construct a highly tractable multi-sender, multi-receiver cheap talk game in which players choose with whom to communicate. We show that segregation into small, homogeneous groups can improve everybody's information and generate Paretoimprovements. Polarized preferences create a need for segregation; uncertainty about preferences and the availability of public information magnify this need. Using data from Twitter, we show several behavioral patterns that are consistent with the results of our model.

Keywords: asymmetric information; echo chambers; polarization; debate; cheap talk; information aggregation; Twitter (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc19:203517

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