Why echo chambers are useful

Working paper

Ole Jann, Christoph Schottmüller Why do people appear to forgo information by sorting into "echo chambers"? We construct a highly tractable multi-sender, multi-receiver cheap talk game in which players choose with whom to communicate. We show that segregation into small, homogeneous groups can improve everybody's information and generate Pareto-improvements. Polarized preferences create a need for segregation; uncertainty about preferences magnifies this need. Using data from Twitter, we...

Expand abstract

Authors: Jann, O

• Publication status: Published
• Publisher: University of Oxford Publisher's website
• Series: Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series
• Publication date: 2018-10-02
• Paper number: 857
• Keywords: debate; Twitter; information aggregation; asymmetric information; polarization; echo chambers; cheap talk