The Manufacture of Partisan Echo Chambers by Follow Train Abuse on Twitter

Understand

A growing body of evidence points to critical vulnerabilities of social media, such as the emergence of partisan echo chambers and the viral spread of misinformation.

• We show that these vulnerabilities are amplified by abusive behaviors associated with so-called "follow trains" on Twitter, in which long lists of like-minded accounts are mentioned for others to follow.
• We present the first systematic analysis of a large U.S.
• hyper-partisan train network.