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

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.