窄化的信息世界:国外信息茧房、选择性接触与回音室研究进展

Narrowed Information Universe:A Review of Research on Information Cocoons, Selective Exposure, and Echo Chambers

[目的/意义]信息茧房和回音室都是由个体自身的心理倾向导致外界异质信息无法进入的不利后果,即人们的信息行为不断固化、信息视野不断窄化。本研究旨在揭示国外相关研究现状,探讨未来研究思路与发展趋势。[研究设计/方法]针对信息茧房和回音室两个主题分别开展系统性综述,但鉴于前者实证研究的空白,因而代之以关联密切的选择性接触研究作为综述对象。[结论/发现]选择性接触研究主要围绕政治和健康相关的社会问题展开;回音室研究识别了政治、科学/阴谋、健康、政策、学术等不同类型的回音室,但也有观点认为回音室不存在。信息茧房、选择性接触和回音室都是对特定的信息或人进行趋近/回避的总体行为模式,而以往研究对该行为模式的观测仅考虑了态度的认知维度,忽略了情感和意图维度,且并未落脚到与倾向性信息选择相关的单次行为事件,这不利于总体行为模式的改变。[创新/价值]首次对国外信息茧房/选择性接触和回音室相关文献进行梳理和述评,明确了三个概念的内涵与关联,并在此基础上提出"窄化的信息世界",强调其核心为选择性趋近/回避的信息获取行为模式,为未来探讨信息世界窄化问题提供了清晰系统的研究路径。

[Purpose/Significance]Information cocoons and echo chambers are both connected with humans’ inherent tendency to approach what they like and/or avoid what they dislike. For lack of exposure to the heterogeneous information from the outside, one’s information horizon becomes more and more limited, which in turn reinforces his or her selective information behavior. This study aims to reveal the status quo of existing related research and identify future research trends.[Design/Methodology]This study originally attempted to conduct a systematic review on the existing studies of information cocoons and echo chambers, respectively. However, there existed no empirical research on the former. Hence, this study instead surveyed the literature on selective exposure for its high relevance to information cocoons.[Findings/Conclusion]Selective exposure studies, basically driven by the social issues pertinent to the two dominating topics, i.e., politics and health;echo chambers studies identified various echo chambers, such as political, science/conspiracy, health, policy, scholarly echo chambers, while a minority of the studies doubted the existence of echo chambers. Information cocoons, selective exposure, and echo chambers all refer to the overall behavior patterns of dispositional selection. The existing related studies were limited to the cognition dimension of human attitudes when examining the influence of attitudes on information selection while neglecting the affect and conation dimensions;and they failed to distinguish between single behavior occurrences and overall behavior patterns which is not helpful to the change of overall behavior patterns.[Originality/Value]This study contributes a compressive overview of the literature on information cocoons, selective exposure, and echo chambers. The meaning and relationships among the three concepts were clarified, which led to the new concept of "narrowed information universe" that emphasizes the behavioral patterns of selective approach/avoidance in information acquisition. Useful implications were engendered for the future research on the narrowed information universe.