For journalists, a homogeneous network reduces uncertainties and provides a stable orientation horizon for practices at work and in private life

I have often made the argument that mainstream media divergence from societal norms, and therefore the divergence of their world views and the articles they elect to write and publish, is likely sourced to two dynamics. One dynamic is that 85% of them are concentrated in a handful of cities such as Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles. They are almost certainly victims of a recency bias. If you live in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and New York, what factors are ever-present that are not present elsewhere or are sharply diminished? Party concentration (all big cities are controlled by Democrats), high crime levels, high diversity, sharp inequality, sexual harassment, demographic ill-representation, etc.. If you are inclined to lazily report on what you see and experience, what you see and experience in those big cities is sharply different from others elsewhere.

The other dynamic is cocooning or social isolation - the bubble effect. Some new evidence on the latter.

From Journalistic Homophily on Social Media: Exploring journalists’ interactions with each other on Twitter by Folker Hanusch & Daniel Nölleke. From the Abstract:

Journalists have for considerable time been criticized for living in their own bubbles, a phenomenon industry commentators have referred to as groupthink, while in scholarship the tendency of individuals to connect with people who are like them is termed homophily. This age-old process has come under scrutiny in recent times due to the arrival of social network sites, which have been viewed as both working against but also leading to more homophily. In journalism scholarship, these processes are still little understood, however. Focusing on the social network site Twitter and drawing on a large-scale analysis of more than 600,000 tweets sent by 2908 Australian journalists during one year, this study shows that journalists continue to live in bubbles in their online interactions with each other. Most journalists were more likely to interact with journalists who have the same gender, work in the same organization, on the same beat or in the same location. However, the study also demonstrates some notable exceptions as well as the importance of differentiating between types of interaction.

A more comprensive summary:

Journalists have for considerable time been criticized for living in their own bubbles, a phenomenon industry commentators have referred to as groupthink, while in scholarship the tendency of individuals to connect with people who are like them is termed homophily

As a group ofmedia actors, journalists maintain strong ties with each other, both in private and professional terms, demonstrating the importance of shared occupation as a predictor for their social networks. Consequently, such co-orientation endangers diversity in the news which "has come to acquire the status of an end in itself for mass media"

Focusing on the social network site Twitter and drawing on a large-scale analysis of more than 600,000 tweets sent by 2908 Australian journalists during one year, this study shows that journalists continue to live in bubbles in their online interactions with each other.

Most journalists were more likely to interact with journalists who have the same gender, work in the same organization, on the same beat or in the same location

Our analysis of journalistic beats showed that sports journalists are a particularly tight-knit group who rarely interact with anyone outside their own beat community

We found a similar trend for political journalists... In fact, when political journalists interact with other journalists, it is much more likely these are also political journalists

When journalists retweet, it is primarily the content of their immediate colleagues, pointing to a certain level of organizational content promotion

In conclusion, the shape of interaction networks among journalists on Twitter resembles the structure of their offline networks. Like in the offline world, journalists prefer to connect with those journalists on Twitter who are like them

For journalists, a homogeneous network reduces uncertainties and provides a stable orientation horizon for practices at work and in private life.