Metaphorical echo chambers

A real echo chamber is a room or enclosure that is designed and used to produce reverberated sounds, typically a sound recording studio. The metaphorical use of the term ‘echo chamber‘ is usually used to refer to what happens inside an enclosed system when particular ideas, beliefs and information gets amplified or reinforced when transmitted due to their repetition (sometimes called parroting) and different or competing views are filtered, censored or not allowed. Members of that system become somewhat homogenized in their views. This ‘system’ could be, for example, in a Facebook group, forum or community, a political movement or a social group (groups of fan boys).

This occurs when some information or claim is made to like minded people and then is repeated enough times (echoed) that people assume the information to be true. The more that the information is echoed within the group, the greater the impact of that information. When your opinions are echoed back to you in the community, that serves to reinforce the beliefs. This serves as a barrier to critical discussion within that group due to the banning, filtering or censoring of other beliefs. Individuals tend to participate in those communities that reinforce their own views.

This was also described by these researchers as:

Scientists and other people have known for quite some time that many people tend to limit their exposure to news sources that offer information that goes against their own beliefs—instead, they are drawn to sources that they find agreeable and in so doing bolster their beliefs—when multiple people do the same thing and use the same sources they create what has become known as echo chambers.

For example, FoodBabe is a pseudoscientific crank who is a food activist. All competing views and opinions are deleted on her Facebook page and posters banned, leading to a big Facebook group, Banned by FoodBabe. The filtering and censoring of alternative views reinforces the views held by her so-called, FoodBabe Army. Conspiracy theory groups and anti-vaccination cults are also typical metaphorical echo chambers.

Relevance:

• The relevance to podiatry is that this could be a problem for the profession as a ‘community’ in that certain views are repeated often and outside or differing views are filtered. This can be a problem for any professional group, especially when faced with contradictory scientific evidence. However, the debates within the profession on communities such as Podiatry Arena do not necessarily support that.
• It is a problem in certain running cults such as barefoot running, Pose running and Chi running in which they have their own communities where certain beliefs are continually reinforced. Many of these beliefs are not supported or contradicted by the scientific evidence which is ignored or filtered by the communities. The way that critical discourse (or more appropriately the lack of critical discourse) happens in these types of communities reinforces the cult like perception or behavior that they portray to ‘outsiders’.

External Links:
Supporting the Narrative in an Echochamber (Neurologica Blog)

Related Topics:
Pseudoscience | ‘Dr Google’ and the ‘University of Google’ | Conspiracy Theory | Logical Fallacies | Confirmation Bias | Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future