Young People Online – Navigating Political Echo-Chambers

Prof. Donald Matheson lecturing COMS207 students about the uses and affordances of social media. Source: Canta / Amy Riach.  

The digitisation of media, pop culture, music, and just about everything in between has been hailed as the greatest modern revolution and disparaged as the vice of youth and the epitome of ‘everything that is wrong in the world.’  

But has the digitisation of politics truly led to the digitisation of democracy? 

Christopher Luxon has TikTok, Chlöe Swarbrick has a major Instagram following and as the global political landscape moves increasingly online, the ways we engage with media are reflected in the ways we engage with the democratic process.  

Students are the coveted demographic for election-hopeful politicians, and the generation most routinely blamed for dependence on those damn phones. But in the decline of mass-media, learning to navigate social media instead is a vital skill. According to UC Communications Professor Donald Matheson, “young people tend to be very media literate, and open to new ideas. That’s what defines being young!”  

And as social media evolves from one sphere of communication to a platform essential for news and politics, scepticism online and receptiveness to different perspectives remains vital to political literacy and Aotearoa’s democratic process. 

“I don’t think that young people are the big problem. I think perhaps older individuals who are more jaded, or more disillusioned can be more harmful online. People who are angry and disappointed in their world are the most vulnerable to those echo-chambers on social media,” Matheson said.  

Echo-chambers are restrictive or exclusive environments, where a media user only encounters news and opinions which reflect their own; a growing phenomenon not unique to social media, but certainly exacerbated by it.  

One of the major popular concerns with social media is its ability to create and populate echo-chambers. By surrounding ourselves with content that almost-exclusively reflects existing biases, we are easily entrenched in those ideologies. 

As a result of polarised social media, many have pointed to increasingly polarised politics, and research published by Harvard University in 2023 analysed Facebook’s user-data from 2020, reportedly finding “the majority of content that people see on the platform comes from ‘like-minded sources’” - sources that share the user’s pre-established political leanings. 

We are in a post mass-media age, and unique communities online are forming smaller, defined, publics.  

According to Matheson, “the issue isn’t those publics, because they can be really cool”. For neurodiverse students, or LGBTQ+ youth, who do not feel celebrated by the mainstream, finding community through media-platforms “is fantastic.”  

“If you feel your identity isn’t celebrated, you can find a real community online.”  

But where is the line between inclusive community, and reductive chamber? According to Matheson, “the issue is if that’s all you see. You’re not listening anymore, and that becomes dangerous.”  

He told Canta, “People often dump on the youth of today!”, but young people tend to be media-literate, “and more open to new ideas. Young people are the ones exploring new perspectives.”  

As mass-media fragments, our vulnerability to polarisation and echo-chambers is increased.  

“The breakdown of mass media does have its positives,” Matheson said.  

“More voices are heard, the dominance of the middle and the elite is less.” 

However, it also leads to fragmentation, seen in the polarised way we discuss politics online, the violent Trump vs Biden discourse, or the rise of the far-right in Europe.  

Socio-economic issues are given rise by corners of the internet which share extreme views, and second-year communication student Lucia warned Canta that echo-chambers isolated from other perspectives, and confined to one party-line, can act as ‘ground-zero’ for mis and dis-information, “like when Trump had Twitter.”  

Echo-chambers have always existed; there was a time when different people aligned themselves exclusively with different newspapers, political-communications major Guy, said “echo-chambers are exacerbated by social-media, but not caused by them.”  

Even during mass-media prominence, echo-chambers tended toward political discourse. Lucia said the key difference now is the extent of their reach. Before social media was prominent, “you were sharing views with your town, or your country. Now, anyone can share any extremist view with 8 Billion people.” 

“Humans want validation,” Lucia said, and political echo-chambers satisfy and validate extremist opinions. Political communication student Kate said the online fragmentation “enhances partisan divide,” and pay-to-view subscriptions which place former mass-media platforms behind a pay-wall, are further splintering mass-media outlets.  

This enables people to “niche down into volatile places,” with what little mass-media that remains is becoming even less representative. 

“The best social-media is about bridge-building” Matheson tells his students, not division.  

“Public service media like RNZ, like BBC, have a responsibility to build bridges,” he told Canta, and currently, online echo-chambers are “not giving us connections, just rabbit-holes.”  

In a polarised online landscape, Matheson explained many young people are feeling increasingly disconnected from Aotearoa’s politics. 

“If young people develop this rhetoric that all of politics is boring, or stupid, we will be left with the politicians that people in their 70’s vote for.”  

According to Matheson, “younger politicians only ever get voted in if young people vote.”  

As politics moves into an online sphere, so too must public discourse, and young people have the ability to lead the way in forming positive communities online, without regressing into isolated echo-chambers.