Fragmentation and Dynamics of Echo Chambers of Turkish Political Youth Groups on Twitter

• Published in: Journal of Socio-Informatics Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 17 - 32
• Main Authors: OZAYDIN, Seval Yurtcicek, NISHIDA, Ryosuke
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Society of Socio-Informatics 2021; 一般社団法人 社会情報学会
• Subjects: echo chamber; fragmentation; polarization; social media; youth participation in politics
• ISSN: 1882-9171; 2432-2156
• DOI: 10.14836/jsi.14.1_17

Aiming to contribute to the debate whether the Internet and in particular social networks are leading to echo chambers of fragmented groups or to public sphere, this article investigates the dynamics of echo chambers of followers of Turkish political youth groups on Twitter. It focuses on two classes: Official youth organizations of ruling party and main opposition party, and one independent group. Retrieving over 40 million tweets of 30 thousand followers of these groups, 5.5 million interactions between 2016 and 2018 were analyzed. Strong echo chambers are found, and no weakening observed with a small-scale exception through cross-ideology exposure by individuals following two groups. The results are discussed along with the political lines and the independence level of the groups.