From Information to Affirmation: An Investigation on the Echo Chamber Effect from YouTube Comments under Technology Product Reviews

TL;DR

This study investigates the formation of echo chambers in YouTube comments on technology product reviews, analyzing comment content and sentiments to understand how opinions are reinforced within online communities.

Contribution

It uniquely focuses on YouTube comments, combining quantitative content and sentiment analysis to explore echo chamber effects in product review discussions.

Findings

Echo chambers form through argumentation and sentiment reinforcement.

Comments tend to reinforce existing beliefs and opinions.

Sentiment analysis reveals polarization in comment discussions.

Abstract

Social media may create echo chambers that reaffirm users' beliefs and opinions through repeated exposure of similar notions. Whilst the formation and effect of echo chambers have been intensively examined in thread-based platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, we shift our focus on product review discussions on YouTube. This paper examines YouTube comments (n=2500) through a combined approach of quantitative content analysis (QCA) and sentiment analysis (SA) under selected selected YouTube videos (n=10). We conclude this paper by highlighting the formation of echo chamber effect in relation to comment argumentation and sentiments.