A paper based on the research published online Friday, September 14 in the journal PLOS One, builds upon previous work by the research team that determined how echo chambers work and how to measure them.
“Finding evidence of echo chambers in American climate politics proves that policy actors are essentially cherry picking the information they receive related to climate science,” said lead researcher Dana R. Fisher, Professor of Sociology at UMD and Director of the Program for Society and the Environment. “Echo chambers can block progress toward a policy resolution related to climate change because individuals who have the same perspective and get information from the same sources are often under the impression that theirs is the dominant perspective.”
In their initial study, researchers surveyed active members of the U.S. climate policy network in the summer of 2010 about their attitudes toward climate science and climate policy, and questioned them about their policy network connections. The research team repeated the process in the summer of 2016 to determine whether echo chambers still existed and how they have changed.
“The research presents data collected during two very different time periods with respect to climate politics,” said Lorien Jasny with the Department of Politics at the University of Exeter, a…
