Research On Echo Chamber Effect In The Evolution Of Public Opinion

Since the revolution of Web 2.0,the use of the concept of "echo chamber effect" has risen rapidly and is widely used in comprehensive social sciences such as homogeneity in sociology,cognitive dissonance in psychology,and selective contact in communication.In order to increase user traffic and increase user stickiness,emerging social media pushes or recommends content that is similar to the user's opinion according to the user's preferences,so that individual opinions can always hear responses similar to their own opinions,and their own opinions are continuously strengthened,which is likely to cause the emergence of the echo chamber effect.As the movement of information method,exploring the internal mechanism and forming conditions of the echo chamber effect in the evolution of public opinion can promote the understanding of new social phenomena in the Internet age,and is of great significance to the study of public opinion evolution.Based on the latest theoretical research results of sociology and communication,this paper introduces individual homogeneity and selective contact factors to improve the public opinion dynamics model,combining with three rewiring strategies based on random,reposting and recommendations,using simulation methods to study the echo chamber effect,and the mechanism of the echo chamber effect under the combined effect of network structure and opinion dynamics is explored.Facing the data of public opinion evolution simulation,this paper puts forward quantitative indexes such as viewpoint cluster closure,polarization coefficient and chamber density,respectively reflecting the characteristics of information homogeneity,social boundary and user similarity of the echo chamber effect.The results of simulation experiments show that individual homogeneity tends to accelerate the emergence of information homogeneity in the echo chamber effect;the selective contact strategy based on recommendations will accelerate the polarization of viewpoints and promote the formation of social boundaries in the echo chamber effect;Compared with random rewiring strategy,the density of the chamber is greatly increased by the rewiring strategy based on recommendations.In addition,when the two factors of homogeneity and selective contact work together,it will accelerate the appearance of the echo chamber effect.This paper confirms the effect of homogeneity and selective contact factors on the echo chamber effect through simulation experiments,verifies the rationality of the simulation data-oriented echo chamber effect measurement index,and explores the formation mechanism of the echo chamber effect,which is expected to play an auxiliary role in public opinion guidance strategies.