Inside the Echo Chamber: Disentangling network dynamics from polarization

Understand

Echo chambers are defined by the simultaneous presence of opinion polarization with respect to a controversial topic and homophily, i.e.

• the preference of individuals to interact with like-minded peers.
• While recent efforts have been devoted to detecting the presence of echo chambers in polarized debates on online social media, the dynamics leading to the emergence of these phenomena remain unclear.
• Here, we contribute to this endeavor by proposing novel metrics to single out the effect of the network dynamics from the opinion polarization.