Blogs are Echo Chambers: Blogs are Echo Chambers

In the last decade, blogs have exploded in number, popularity and scope. However, many commentators and researchers speculate that blogs isolate readers in echo chambers, cutting them off from dissenting opinions. Our empirical paper tests this hypothesis. Using a hand-coded sample of over 1,000 comments from 33 of the world's top blogs, we find that agreement outnumbers disagreement in blog comments by more than 3 to 1. However, this ratio depends heavily on a blog's genre, varying between 2 to 1 and 9 to 1. Using these hand-coded blog comments as input, we also show that natural language processing techniques can identify the linguistic markers of agreement. We conclude by applying our empirical and algorithmic findings to practical implications for blogs, and discuss the many questions raised by our work.