Retesting the echo chamber research: An evaluation for social media environment in Türkiye

The echo chamber has recently been one of the hotly-debated concepts in the academic field. One reason for this is that the concept is thought to play a key role in explaining situations like polarization, fragmentation, mis/disinformation and so on. The fact that its boundaries and definition cannot be made clearly has led to intense discussions on the concept. Academic research conducted to measure the impact of the concept, on the other hand, give contradictory results. This thesis, aims to retest the research previously done by Dubois and Blank (2018) for the Turkish media environment. A survey is conducted with 810 participants using the qualitative method. The survey results illustrate that first, it is appropriate to reconsider the echo chamber concept within the theoretical framework of network/opinion polarization, as Törnberg (2018) suggested. Secondly, network polarization is only partially effective in the context of Türkiye, while opinion polarization is at a considerably high level. Third, although interest in politics and media diversity are high, the frequency of changing views is quite low. Fourth, the homophily effect is found to be quite low. The survey participants do not agree with the political content their friends share on online platforms. Fifth, interestingness and popularity/virality of news are at the forefront when reading the details of the news. In addition, reliability and informative content are important when choosing a news source. Finally, it is observed that social media platforms and internet news sites have become the primary means of getting the news.