Political Echo Chambers: The Internet Facilitates Identity Confirmation

<p>The global expansion of the Internet and social media has led to not only interconnectedness, but also division as people with different worldviews inhabit identity echo chambers with like-minded others and are empowered to clash with those who have different worldviews. The research conducted in this study aimed to determine whether the easy access to confirming information provided by the Internet satisfies the basic human motivation to confirm rather than challenge one’s attitudes, values, and identity. Building on uncertainty-identity theory and research related to group identity and Internet communication, this study hypothesized that people who are uncertain about their identity are more likely to use the Internet to confirm their beliefs when it comes to political identity. Participants were 237 American adults (recruited using MTurk) who completed a 14-page questionnaire. The study adopted a 2x2 design with two independent variables: political identity and self-uncertainty. The dependent variable was the variety of politically leaning webpage links selected from those provided in the questionnaire. Self-uncertainty was found to affect variety of link selection such that participants in the high self-uncertainty condition selected more weblinks that were Democrat-leaning. Additionally, irrespective of political party affiliation, participants were found to self-report that they chose more Republican-leaning weblinks. </p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Psychology, MA

Level thesis:degree_level

Restricted to Claremont Colleges Master's Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

School of Social Science, Politics, and Evaluation

Year dc:date.available

2023

Author dc:creator

• Rodriguez, Amelia Lee

Contributors dc:contributor

• Eusebio Alvaro

• identity confirmation
• Internet
• politics
• uncertain-identity theory
• Social Psychology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/878

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:cgu_etd-1900