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      Authors’ Response to Peer Reviews of “Social Media Polarization and Echo Chambers in the Context of COVID-19: Case Study”

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      , BSc 1 , 2 , , PhD 2 , , PhD 1 , 2 , 3 ,
      JMIRx Med
      JMIR Publications
      social media, opinion, COVID-19, case study, polarization, communication, Twitter, echo chamber

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          Social Media Polarization and Echo Chambers in the Context of COVID-19: Case Study

          Background Social media chatter in 2020 has been largely dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing research shows that COVID-19 discourse is highly politicized, with political preferences linked to beliefs and disbeliefs about the virus. As it happens with topics that become politicized, people may fall into echo chambers, which is the idea that one is only presented with information they already agree with, thereby reinforcing one’s confirmation bias. Understanding the relationship between information dissemination and political preference is crucial for effective public health communication. Objective We aimed to study the extent of polarization and examine the structure of echo chambers related to COVID-19 discourse on Twitter in the United States. Methods First, we presented Retweet-BERT, a scalable and highly accurate model for estimating user polarity by leveraging language features and network structures. Then, by analyzing the user polarity predicted by Retweet-BERT, we provided new insights into the characterization of partisan users. Results We observed that right-leaning users were noticeably more vocal and active in the production and consumption of COVID-19 information. We also found that most of the highly influential users were partisan, which may contribute to further polarization. Importantly, while echo chambers exist in both the right- and left-leaning communities, the right-leaning community was by far more densely connected within their echo chamber and isolated from the rest. Conclusions We provided empirical evidence that political echo chambers are prevalent, especially in the right-leaning community, which can exacerbate the exposure to information in line with pre-existing users’ views. Our findings have broader implications in developing effective public health campaigns and promoting the circulation of factual information online.
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            Peer Review of “Social Media Polarization and Echo Chambers in the Context of COVID-19: Case Study”

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              Peer Review of “Social Media Polarization and Echo Chambers in the Context of COVID-19: Case Study”

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                JMIRx Med
                JMIRx Med
                JMIRxMed
                JMIRx Med
                JMIR Publications (Toronto, Canada )
                2563-6316
                Jul-Sep 2021
                5 August 2021
                5 August 2021
                : 2
                : 3
                : e32266
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Information Sciences Institute University of Southern California Marina Del Rey, CA United States
                [2 ] Department of Computer Science Viterbi School of Engineering University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA United States
                [3 ] Annenberg School of Communication University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA United States
                Author notes
                Corresponding Author: Emilio Ferrara ferrarae@ 123456isi.edu
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4260-282X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8655-663X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1942-2831
                Article
                v2i3e32266
                10.2196/32266
                10414294
                4554270e-f33a-4fe0-a0f2-9e6af2ce24f2
                ©Julie Jiang, Xiang Ren, Emilio Ferrara. Originally published in JMIRx Med (https://med.jmirx.org), 05.08.2021.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIRx Med, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://med.jmirx.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

                History
                : 20 July 2021
                : 20 July 2021
                Categories
                Authors’ Response to Peer Reviews
                Authors’ Response to Peer Reviews

                social media,opinion,covid-19,case study,polarization,communication,twitter,echo chamber

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