The Clinton–Lewinsky scandal reporting was chronicled in Time magazine's 16 February 1998 "Trial by Leaks" cover story [45] "The Press And The Dress: The anatomy of a salacious leak, and how it ricocheted around the walls of the media echo chamber" by Adam Cohen. [46] This case was also reviewed in depth by the Project for Excellence in Journalism in "The Clinton/Lewinsky Story: How Accurate? How Fair?" [47] Broadly, a number of studies find that while many people do engage in some degree of selective exposure, they do not necessarily engage in selective avoidance (Bos et al. 2016; Garrett 2009; 2013; Garrett and Stroud 2014; Jang 2014; Johnson et al. Second, the risks associated with people primarily seeking out attitude-consistent information, let alone living in bounded media spaces where their pre-existing views are rarely challenged, can be much smaller than many believe while still being present, and it is clearly possible for people to come to hold very polarised views – sometimes views that are contradicted by the best available scientific research – without living in echo chambers or filter bubbles. Sometimes minorities, however small, play an important role in driving public and policy debate and decision making. (As Guess (2021, p. 12) puts it, in the US context, “even if most Americans do not exist in online echo chambers, they are subject to the political influence of those who do.”) And sometimes confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and social reinforcement from the communities we spent most of our offline lives with will mean we have very strong views, even as we also see a wide range of different kinds of information via news and media. Research on polarisation offers a complex picture both in terms of overall developments and the main drivers and there is in many cases limited empirical work done outside the United States. Overall, ideological polarisation has, in the long run, declined in many countries but affective polarisation has in some, but not all, cases increased. News audience polarisation is much lower in most European countries, including the United Kingdom. Much depends on the specifics of individual countries and what point in time one measures change from and there are no universal patterns.

Cinelli, M., De Francisci Morales, G., Galeazzi, A., Quattrociocchi, W., & Starnini, M. (2021). The echo chamber effect on social media. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(9), e2023301118. Public discussions around science online may exhibit some of the same dynamics as those observed around politics and in news and media use broadly, but fundamentally there is at this stage limited empirical research on the possible existence, size, and drivers of echo chambers in public discussions around science. More broadly, existing research on science communication, mainly from the United States, documents the important role of self-selection, elite cues, and small, highly active communities with strong views in shaping these debates and highlights the role especially political elites play in shaping both news coverage and public opinion on these issues.Dalton, R. J. (2006). Social modernization and the end of ideology debate: Patterns of ideological polarization. Japanese Journal of Political Science, 7(1), 1–22.

Third, given the ease of accessing news online and the abundant supply, differences in individuals’ active choices and regular habits play a defining role in the overall distribution of news use, tending towards greater inequalities, with a large minority of news lovers, about 22% of UK internet users, engaging with many different news sources on a regular basis across many different offline and online platforms, a majority of daily briefers (55%) who use a few different sources of news and a large minority of more casual users (23%) who often do not access news daily. Differences in news use are partially aligned with differences in age, gender, education, and income, both in general (Kalogeropoulos and Nielsen 2018) and around, for example, coronavirus information (Fletcher et al. 2020b). Jamieson, Kathleen; Cappella, Joseph (1 January 2008). Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment. ISBN 978-0-19-536682-2. Sunstein, Cass R. (June 2002). "The Law of Group Polarization". Journal of Political Philosophy. 10 (2): 175–195. doi: 10.1111/1467-9760.00148. ISSN 0963-8016. Flaxman, S., Goel, S., & Rao, J. M. (2016). Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and online news consumption. Public Opinion Quarterly, 80(S1), 298–320.

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Whether echo chambers and the like work broadly in the same ways around science issues as around more conventionally political issues. One recent study (Fletcher et al. 2021b), that includes the UK, used survey data from 2020 to assess the number of people in politically partisan online news echo chambers in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Spain, the UK, and the US by looking at how many people only use news sources with left- or right-leaning slants (measured in terms of the overall ideological slant of each outlet's audience). The network of social media accounts and communities harboring and circulating the Flat Earth theory has been described as an echo chamber. [2] Polarisation, in social science, refers to divisions between groups. It can be used to describe a situation where divisions are already sufficiently large to be considered polarised, or a process whereby divisions are becoming larger over time (even though they may still be quite small). Polarisation can take many forms and is not always intrinsically problematic (some things are worth disagreeing over, see Kreiss 2019). In addition to people’s common use of relatively impartial public service broadcasting undercutting the existence of partisan echo chambers, we should keep in mind that – at least online – their potential size is limited by the fact that many people do not consume much online news in the first place. In the UK, around 25% of internet users say they access no online news at all each week (Newman et al. 2021).

In principle, echo chambers could concern any topic and could magnify any messages one can think of – ambiguous, benign, or malign; widely accepted or controversial; evidence-based or demonstrably false, and anything in between. In practice, social scientists have primarily researched one specific type of echo chamber, namely politically partisan news echo chambers where some people exclusively get news and information from sources that are very clearly on one side of the political spectrum. DiFonzo, Nicholas (11 September 2008). The Watercooler Effect: An Indispensable Guide to Understanding and Harnessing the Power of Rumors. Penguin Books. ISBN 9781440638633 . Retrieved 24 September 2017. Brulle, R.J., Carmichael, J., & Jenkins, J. C. (2012). Shifting public opinion on climate change: An empirical assessment of factors influencing concern over climate change in the U.S., 2002–2010. Climatic Change, 114(2), 169–188.

Echo chamber dynamics in social media as a two-step process. The first is "seeding" in which malicious actors insert misinformation into the public sphere, and second is “echoing” when people circulate it as part of their beliefs and identity. [2] There is evidence for all these, but it is either mixed or exclusively from one country, so we cannot necessarily assume these findings apply everywhere. Fletcher, R., Kalogeropoulos, A., & Nielsen, R. K. (2021a). More diverse, more politically varied: How social media, search engines and aggregators shape news repertoires in the United Kingdom.

Chater, James (6 July 2016). "What the EU referendum result teaches us about the dangers of the echo chamber". New Statesman. There is limited research outside the United States systematically examining the possible role of news and media use in contributing to various kinds of polarisation and the work done does not always find the same patterns as those identified in the US. In the specific context of the United States where there is more research, it seems that exposure to like-minded political content can potentially polarise people or strengthen the attitudes of people with existing partisan attitudes and that cross- cutting exposure can potentially do the same for political partisans. Walter, Stefanie; Brüggemann, Michael; Engesser, Sven (21 December 2017). "Echo Chambers of Denial: Explaining User Comments on Climate Change". Environmental Communication. 12 (2): 204–217. doi: 10.1080/17524032.2017.1394893. ISSN 1752-4032. S2CID 148918776. Cinus, Federico; Minici, Marco; Monti, Corrado; Bonchi, Francesco (9 July 2022). The effect of people recommenders on echo chambers and polarization. International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. Vol.16. pp.90–101.

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An important distinction exists in the strength of the respective epistemic structures. Epistemic bubbles are not particularly robust. Relevant information has merely been left out, not discredited. [30] One can ‘pop’ an epistemic bubble by exposing a member to the information and sources that they have been missing. [3] Thus, there are distinct questions of outcomes (how many people live in echo chambers versus more diverse media spaces?) and contributing causes (what is the relative importance of active users’ choices versus algorithmic filtering in determining the diversity of sources people access?). Supply, distribution, and demand can all contribute to the formation of echo chambers. Terms like echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation are widely used in public and political debate but not in ways that are always aligned with, or based on, scientific work. And even among academic researchers, there is not always a clear consensus on exact definitions of these concepts. Finally, there are other studies which contradict the existence of echo chambers. Some found that people also share news reports that don't align with their political beliefs. [23] In summary, the picture on polarisation is complex and research is often limited outside the United States. Overall, ideological polarisation has, in the long run, declined in many countries, but affective polarisation has in some cases, but not all, increased. News audience polarisation is much lower in most European countries, including the United Kingdom. Much depends on the specifics of individual countries and what point in time one measures change from, and there are no universal patterns, suggesting country-specific factors drive national developments, including most importantly the behaviour of political elites and social dynamics.