IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/palcom/v12y2025i1d10.1057_s41599-025-05806-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Community dynamics and echo chambers: a longitudinal study of the Belt and Road Initiative in the Twittersphere during COVID-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Chun-Yin Man

    (The University of Hong Kong)

  • David A. Palmer

    (The University of Hong Kong
    The University of Hong Kong)

  • Junxi Qian

    (The University of Hong Kong)

Abstract

The “echo chamber” effect has been widely decried as a destructive consequence of social media on public discourse, leading people to repetitively encounter their pre-existing perspectives without rebuttal in online political discussions. In this research, we have tested this proposition by using text analytics and the hybrid Louvain method and K-mean clustering to categorize the diffusion patterns of more than 158,000 reposted threads about the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive and controversial Chinese-led infrastructure development strategy with profound economic and geo-political implications, transmitted before and during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that while echo chambers persist temporally within certain like-minded communities, the overall public opinion is not necessarily polarized and highly sentimentalized. The magnitudes of opinion polarization are contingent on topics of information diffused by opinion leaders, and we estimate that the most severe isolation from dissimilar opinions only existed among

Suggested Citation

  • Chun-Yin Man & David A. Palmer & Junxi Qian, 2025. "Community dynamics and echo chambers: a longitudinal study of the Belt and Road Initiative in the Twittersphere during COVID-19 pandemic," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-15, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-05806-8
    DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-05806-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-025-05806-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41599-025-05806-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-05806-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.nature.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.