Além da câmara de eco: desvendando mitos e verdades sobre o consumo informacional dos brasileiros na pandemia de COVID-19

Abstract

This research aimed to detect the presence and analyze the real impact of the echo chamber on Brazilians in relation to the customized consumption of information during the COVID-19 pandemic, taking into account the political and affective polarization of a public health issue by media coverage. More specifically, assess the causes of this phenomenon and the extent to which it has impacted, or not, people's behavior in the face of the pandemic. Understand the true reach of echo chambers in a multimedia communication environment, combining online and offline channels in a transmedia process; checking, within the pandemic context, whether this phenomenon is being overestimated or not. The study maps and explores how far the power of traditional media and digital media goes in promoting echo chambers and how they have impacted, or not, on the behavior and attitudes of Brazilians, based on quantitative analysis of data from the research “Communication in combating COVID-19: Identification of informational inequalities in segments at risk”, coordinated by the Center for Research in Political Communication and Public Health (CPS) at the University of Brasília (UnB) in 2020. Our analyzes found findings of the presence of the echo chamber on a smaller scale than expected, being the phenomenon most easily identifiable in traditional media, especially TV, regardless of the ideological spectrum of the audience. Digital media has surprisingly had the opposite effect of taking people out of their echo chambers. We conclude that the customized consumption of information and the presence in the chambers reach more predisposed individuals who opt for traditional media, especially TV, that is, less educated people, with less interest in politics and follow the protestant religion. Therefore, group identities and affiliations proved to be more important than the ideological spectrum or partisanship in the choices of information sources. As for the impact on the behavior and attitudes of Brazilians, it was not significant according to our study, dismantling theories of media determinism and bubbles formed by digital media algorithms