echo chamber

noun

|Updated on: 24 Jun 2018

Definition of echo chamber

: a room with sound-reflecting walls used for producing hollow or echoing sound effects —often used figuratively

Living in a kind of echo chamber of their own opinions, they pay attention to information that fits their conclusions and ignore information that does not.
—James Surowiecki

Recent Examples of echo chamber from the Web

These findings are consistent with the results of other studies, which together show that most conversations in the public sphere are echo chambers with the same narrow range of white male voices dominating.

— carole r. myers, STAT, "Nurses play vital roles in health care. Why are they invisible in the media?," 13 June 2018
What yesterday marks is the first time Barr’s tweets — those thoughts cast out in the echo chamber of the internet — had tangible repercussions in the real world.

— refinery29.com, "How Roseanne Barr Killed Roseanne," 30 May 2018
Social media’s echo chambers have given the issue particularly hysterical and toxic undertones.

— karina piser, The New Republic, "Inside France’s Growing Identity War," 29 May 2018
The conservative echo chamber falls in line behind Trump to amplify the noise, repeating his claims without scrutiny.

— peter hamby, The Hive, "“That Is What Power Looks Like”: As Trump Prepares for 2020, Democrats Are Losing the Only Fight That Matters," 26 May 2018
Technology allows us to burrow into echo chambers, exacerbating misinformation and polarization and softening up society for propaganda.

— farhad manjoo, New York Times, "For Two Months, I Got My News From Print Newspapers. Here’s What I Learned.," 7 Mar. 2018
Conservatives have spent decades building a critique of mainstream news, lovingly compiling examples of biased or allegedly biased reporting, and constructing an echo chamber in which the dread Liberal Media can be ignored.

— jonathan chait, Daily Intelligencer, "Trump Admits He Calls All Negative News ‘Fake’," 9 May 2018
Critics say Facebook exploits our addictive impulses and silos us in ideological echo chambers.

— charles duhigg, New York Times, "The Case Against Google," 20 Feb. 2018
Progressives live piled on top of each other in ideological echo chambers far more ideologically uniform than even their counterparts the heart of Trump country.

— david french, National Review, "Democratic Immigration Extremism and Warnings of Extremism to Come," 25 Jan. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'echo chamber.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.