Exploring the echo chamber concept

Abstract

Echo chambers have often been analyzed in social media studies as dysfunctions of communication fostering the polarization of debates and the spreading of conspiracy theories. On the other hand, from a linguistic perspective, very little research has been conducted on these themes. Our work aims to investigate the linguistic dimension of echo chambers, exploring them as ideological structures that are observable when ideological conflict occurs. Using word embedding and corpus-based discourse analysis, we investigate mediatic discourse on COVID-19 in the Coronavirus Corpus and in the Public Coronavirus Twitter Data Set. The analysis focuses on the semantic and pragmatic status of the word hoax, which emerges as a keyword characterizing the Twitter dataset. Our study shows how linguistic markers of ideological conflict can act as markers of position and affective/social identity.