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In the wake of Donald Trump's election in November, we looked at the phenomenon of social media bubbles and the effect they have on political discourse.

Research released by UK political think tank Demos reveals some of the extent of the echo chamber effect in political discussions on Twitter.

Demos looked at 2,000 users of Twitter all of whom expressed open support for either the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, The UK Independence Party (Ukip) or the Scottish National Party (SNP). A further 500 acted as a control group expressing no party allegiance. The results show, perhaps not surprisingly, that supporters of all parties are most likely to retweet people who share their views.

What's interesting, however, is that the effect becomes more pronounced as you move away from the mainstream parties. Conservatives were least partisan, retweeting other conservatives 46 percent of the time, Labour supporters retweet their own side 65 percent of the time. But Ukip supporters retweet other Ukippers 73 percent of the time and SNP supporters retweet their own 78 percent of the time.

The extent to which those studied retweeted media sources follows their political leanings too. Labour and SNP supporters are most likely to share stories from left-leaning sites like the Guardian and the Independent, whereas Conservative and Ukip supporters are most likely to share from the Telegraph or Guido Fawkes. Labour supporters though are more likely to tweet Telegraph stories (16 percent) than Conservatives are Guardian ones (11 percent).

"The paper suggests that there is a strong connection between a user's ideology and the users and news sources they interact with, and that offline beliefs play a key role in the way users behave online, a hypothesis that is often assumed but rarely measured," says the man behind the study, Alex Krasodomski-Jones writing on the Demos website.

In his conclusion to the report Krasodomski-Jones notes, "Compromise, the ability to process a diverse range of opinion and, above all, an acceptance of some kind of shared reality and truth are central to a functioning democracy. All are threatened by the echo chamber effect."

You can find out more and download the full Talking to Ourselves? report on the Demos website.

Photo Credit: Bevan Goldswain/Shutterstock

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