Finanziamento UE – NextGenerationEU PRIN 2022 PNRR - ECHO-BIT Echo CHambers, Opinions and Behaviors in Italy - PNRR M4C2 investimento 1.1 Avviso 1409/2022

Recently, social and political scientists developed the concept of political echo chamber,defi ned as a relational or media space in which people are exposed to and communicate (almost) exclusively information congruent with their beliefs. Citizens can limit their exposure to inconsistent sources of information (from media outlets orindividuals/groups). In some cases, they can “isolate” themselves, interacting only withpeople holding similar opinions, pushing them to being embedded in an echo chamber. In political terms, an echo chamber is a situation in which partisan citizens tend to be (almost)uniquely exposed to partisan media outlets and discussants. According to theories on echochambers, being embedded in such environments make people impermeable to oppositeviews (when they are able to reach them). This represents a relevant threat to the democratic process. In a well-functioning democracy,being exposed to opposing opinions can allow citizens to have a wider knowledge of politicalissues to make informed decisions and form their opinions. Nevertheless, the literature on echo chambers has three major gaps this project aims atfi lling: 1) The echo chamber hypothesis has been mainly tested in a few contexts, mainly in the US.Therefore, the ECHO-BIT project will extend this test to a country, Italy, that presents specific, understudied political and media-related characteristics. 2) In the literature, diff erent realms of patterns of information acquisition - offl ine (viainterpersonal communication) and online (via social media) - are usually analyzed separately,not comparing the two spheres. The ECHO-BIT project will compare systematically thehomogeneity of interpersonal networks and online interactions to investigate how thesenetworks are related to each other. 3) Few works have dealt with the consequences that heterogeneity in online and offl ineinformation have for political opinions and behaviors. The ECHO-BIT project will systematicallytest how diff erent levels of information homogeneity are related to specifi c opinions (such asgeneralized and institutional trust, democratic attitudes, aff ective polarization, and policypreferences) and behaviors (voting, political and social participation). To achieve these goals, the project will collect a unique dataset in Italy during the 2024European Elections that consists of: 1) A fi ne-grained collection of passive metering data (browsing history/social media activity)about citizens’ media and interpersonal political exposure. 2) A longitudinal survey data on the same individuals regarding opinions, behaviors andexposure to homogeneous networks in real life. The ECHO-BIT project aims at increasing the knowledge on crucial issues of opinion formationand deepening the understanding of the eff ect of media partisan slant on political attitudesand behaviors.