I think that "group think" steers people's opinions not out of true opinion but social acceptance. "contrary individuals" aren't "team players" and will get "kicked out of the group."

To boldly go...

It might make it easier for everyone if you'd give the study title and its publication venue and date so that readers can make informed comments on it.

I want to add to those who have already pointed out ways in which the internet discussion context, such as exists at blogs like this one, differs substantially from in-person discussions among small groups. The fundamental differences are physical separation and the availability of the option of anonymity. Whatever other drawbacks they might have - and there are some - these factors empower individuals and help to preserve diversity, honesty and disagreement. I have a few hypotheses about these factors that seem to me to be worth testing.

Human beings have natural conflict resolving and conflict avoiding tendencies which are very powerful regulators within groups. Disagreement always carries the potential for hostilities of various kinds, and within groups the dominant tendency is to eliminate disagreement and reach consensus. Discussion does not just consist in reasoning and argument. It is a negotiation where pressures for consensus lead people to make concessions and exchanges (I'll drop P and accept not-P if you'll drop Q and accept not-Q). Participation in small group activities also erodes identity boundaries, so there is less perceived difference between what one really believes and what one has agreed to say and accept.

Where people are physically separated and possibly anonymous, to one degree or another, the factors that push toward consensus are less in play: such things as the discomfort produced by unfriendly or scrutinizing eye contact; negative self-appraisals produced by visually witnessing the displeasure of others at your opinions; intimidation by physical size, by non-verbal, visual indices of social status and success, etc.

Small groups also tend to arrive rapidly at some sort of system for self-moderating: who speaks when and for how long; whether side discussions are permitted; whether talking over other people is permitted, etc. Discussion "leaders" emerge, and take charge of the moderating functions. This can lead to a well-governed discussion, but it can also result in the leaders and followers using moderating power to suppress or discourage dissent. If one finds that the more one agrees with the discussion leaders, the more frequently and extendedly one is permitted to speak, one is likely to adapt quickly to the habit of agreement.

Internet discussions are not like this. Where everyone can type at the same time from their own location, and where their statements are merely added to the thread or sub-thread on a first-come/first-serve basis, there is less need for moderation and dissenters cannot be easily silenced. This makes it easier to speak up in disagreement, and to hold one's ground in the face of opposition. Even ridicule loses its oppressive punch, because it is somewhat more detached from the power to ostracize. Your internet discussants might find you ridiculous, but then you just turn off your computer and return to your everyday social surroundings where those discussants are not present - so there is little after-effect. Slings and arrows are less of a problem if one can turn them off at will.

So overall, where the members of the discussion group are physically present in one room, there will be more pressure toward consensus than there will be if they interact remotely through an internet connection. Here are some hypotheses that I would like to see someone test about discussion contexts in which the discussants are physically present:

1. There will be stronger pressure toward consensus if the individuals are introduced first, or if they already know each other, than if they remain strangers and names are not used.

2. The size of the room matters, as does the number of people in the space, so:

a. Anonymity and avoidance are harder in smaller groups. In a large group, an individual may just decide to withdraw, not participate and keep their own counsel. So there will be less pressure to modify their views. I suspect that the preservation of opinion differences correlates positively and exponentially with group size.

b. There will be more consensus pressure if six individuals, for example, are seated around a small table in a tight room than if they are seated at substantial distance from each other in a large hall. So I'm guessing the preservation of opinion differences correlates positively with room size, and with the average distance from the discussion focal point.

c. If one or a few individuals are selected to occupy the focal point and to state their position first, with a larger group disposed around them, the larger group will "gang up" on the individuals at the focal point, putting them in the hot seat. The outer group will evolve a consensus defined by opposition to the position of the individuals in the hot seat. The individuals in the hot seat, if there are more than one, will also arrive quickly at a defensive consensus.

I'm not sure if this is evidence of the coercive nature of groups or the persuasive effects of rational argument.

I mean, if people are going to be passionate about saving the environment, creating equal opportunity in society and marriage equality for homosexuals, then I'm all for it.

Sure, it cuts both ways, but I'm willing to believe that liberals become more liberal when in discussion with other liberals because, well, it's a persuasive idealogoy.

On the conservative side, it's clearly just mass delusion and the madness of crowds. Just kidding.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

A reader blog this past week drew attention to a similar kind of thing. The poster (Devon) had been reading a book about cognitive errors by Nisbett and Ross. Devon was intrigued by this quote:

More vivid information… is likely to remain “in thought” for a longer time after being received. One might think that time in thought, by itself, might have no particular consequences. But this presumption is apparently wrong. Tester (1978) showed that the longer an object or proposition remains in thought, the more extreme are the attitudes toward it. For example, subjects asked to ponder a particular football play for a longer time end up with more extreme judgments of its advisability than do subjects allowed to think about the play for a shorter time. It seems likely that more vivid information may generate more extreme inferences partially because it incidentally is likely to remain in thought longer (Nisbett and Ross 1980, p. 55) (my italics)

Perhaps the Professor can comment about this in the context of the study presented.

Thanks.

But that experiment doesn't really replicate the experience of blogs. A better experiment would be if each table had microphones and speakers so everyone could hear what the other tables were saying, and then the groups each spent their time criticizing what the other groups were saying.

The one critical difference between this experiment and the reality of the internet is the rat-in-a-box aspect. People are brought together and assigned to a group. Once stuffed into a box they begin to talk. Being of like opinions, they tend to reinforce each others' positions. But that's at least in part because they've been stuffed in the box together.
On the internet, going from group to group is trivialy easy. And people (surprise, surprise!) will gravitate to places where people agree with them and reinforce their opinions.
This is not polarizing, this is differentiating. And there is a world of difference between the two.
If instead of stuffing people in a box, you set up a model more like the Internet--say, a large reception hall with many tables, with people encouraged to table-hop and discuss issues. I think, after a while, that the atheist progressives will tend to gather at one table and the non-atheists at another, and the Ayn Randists will hunch over at a different place from the Left-Behindists--but there would be a constant action of people jumping from table to table. Trolling the opposition, stopping by the ecocatastrophists table, and so on.
I question how much such an experiment is useful, unless it takes into account the massive dose of authoritarianism it contains. People are sorted, stuffed in boxes, told to talk, and tested. People aren't rats, and they know that they're being manipulated. They're told what to talk about. (And they're given easy questions, too. I wonder if they were told to discuss Israel if they'd reinforce each other quite so much.)

If the point of bringing this up is to argue that political converrsation on the Internet is polarizing the nationm and that that is a bad thing--the experimenters pre-polarized the sample; they isolated the polarized sections; and they ordered them to talk about things they tended to agree on already. After all that polarizing by the experimenters, is it legitimate to say that it says much of anything about polarization in a non-coercive, non-binary situation?

Just what I was going to say.

I think this explains the beltway bubble... like-minded souls, all reinforcing each other's village narrative.

What left-wing blogs did, of course, was pierce the bubble by crashing the dinner party and pulling a chair up to the table. Non-reinforcing narratives are not allowed in DC punditry, so we diversified the discourse by hopping the velvet ropes.

The gatekeepers, of course, are very angry that we've dilluted thier swanky nightclub clientele, when what really bugs them is that we've challenged their notions of intellectual superiority, and have found themselves trying to defend why we should continue to mindlessly download their opinions without making them work for it.

I'm not sure I understand the point of citing this experiment or why it was considered an experiment in democracy. It was, instead, an experiment in perspective taking. Those who engaged with others who agreed with their particular perspective used that activity to reinforce their own perspective. By citing this experiment you are making an assumption that when individuals are confronted with multiple perspectives that they will change their perspective. In other words you are assuming that a process of accomodation and assimilation of multiple viewpoints is the default position for adult humans, and that having limited perspectives will somehow cause adults to engage in this process. There is really no research to back this up - but it it something I would like to believe as well.

But you - and I suppose the experimenters - make a critical mistake if you are looking at the issue from within the context of democracy. I assume you are talking about participatory democracy because of the importance you place on shared view points. The people who wrote most eloquently about participatory democracy such as Dewey and Bentley and even George Counts, suggested that varying view points and perspectives come in to play when a group in trying to solve a problem (that has some concrete meaning to their everyday lives and where they are somehow stakeholders in the solution). The people in these groups have already defined their problem by the time they were recruited in to the discussion phase of the experiment. The civil union group for instance has already defined that there should be civil unions in society, so the problem and therefore the discussion moves to how to enact the civil unions. This is not really a hardening of the position as much as it is a move to the action stage. Similarly those opposed to civil unions have already decided the problem is how to keep civil unions out of society so they have also moved to the action stage, developing a solution to keep civil unions out of society. What you are claiming is extremism (and I would like you to possibly expand on your definition) might actually be considered the development of a solution for an already defined problem. Those who hold opposite views of the problem really have very little chance of communicating with each other in a way that leads to the aforementioned accomodation and assimilation of perspectives.

Let me suggest a much better experiment would be to bring together individuals who are liberal and conservative around a problem that has not been predefined but that is important to their lives. I would like to remind you of one of the most famous experiments in social psychology, the "Robber's Cave" experiment. Groups of pre-adolescents were devided in to groups and perspectives and affiliation congealed through those groups. When they tried to bring the groups together over problems that were already pre-defined by their social circumstances there was social disaster. It was only when they faced a problem that affected both groups equally and that was not predefined that they started working together.

This is all leading up to your thesis about the internet, I understand that. But you are starting off with a poorly constructed example (and I predict even though I am offering another opinion that it is going to have little impact on your perspective - because you have already defined the problem of the internet as an information source).

I'm recalling some research by Kurt Levin, I believe, during the Depression.  It was related to trying to get people to eat liver.  (don't laugh!)  And as I recall, when people came together and discussed the topic of nutrition and cost and so forth, more people, engaged in discussing this for themselves, actually went out and purchased liver.  

Seems to me it may be a similar principle operating here.  That the more people discuss something, the more energized they become about it.  The more likely they are to commit to action.

Just throwing this into the mix. 

How do you know that you are not wrong?
I don't know how old you are.
But try go back and honestly look at your opinions and actions(not only political).
How many of them turned out to be correct and hom many of them turned out to be wrong?

Reece: I don't care if I ever convince a single Republican that we're right. Trying to do so is largely an exercise in futility.

I disagree. I welcome the chance for dialog with people who disagree with me because (1) I believe the facts are on my side and therefore I can cause change, (2) Doing so helps me clarify my positions and (3) I might learn something (particularly if I'm wrong).

I think your quote on ice cream is silly. Joey likes chocolate and Nick favors choice, so what? Apples and oranges. Joey's proper comeback should have been to offer more reason to choose chocolate: "Scientists reported preliminary evidence recently that cocoa and other chocolates may keep high blood pressure down, your blood flowing and your heart healthy. So you'll live longer if you eat chocolate, right?"

To put it another way, a good salesman thrives on objections. "Is it the color or the size you don't like?" Either way you answer, he's (she's) got you if he or she is any good.

When we blog we are really acting as salespeople for our positions. I'm trying to convince you right now, just as you were trying to convince me with your post, right? (A good salesperson always ends with a question.)

So go get those Repubs. There's no way that neocons can justify their positions. They're for war and they're for peace. They're for small government and they're for government repression. They're pro-life and anti-child. They're for freedom and they're for oligarchy. Etc.

I remember back in the run up to the war, thinking, this Iraq War thing is a really, really bad idea. But the monochrome media voices created exactly the effect Sustein describes -- when you only have pro-war pundits, and moderate Democrats (i.e., pro-war), all mocking anyone on the fence as either unhinged or drinking the Kool-Aid, you start to doubt yourself. MSNBC's top rated show, Donahue, had taken off by allowing a dissenting view or two to be mixed in with the usual suspects, and was therefore cancelled. Journalists talked about how they wanted to be objective, but they were Americans and patriots, so excuse us if we get a bit emotional here as we swell with American pride as our troops go off to war!

The first sign of insanity is thinking everyone is crazy but you, and I was starting to worry. A lot of well-informed people were telling me not to believe my eyes -- Bush was much smarter than he looked, the experience of 9/11 had matured him, and he had risen to the task when history called. They all seemed pretty sure of themselves when they said this had to be done, and who was little ole' me to argue with the likes of them?

Then, on the Internet, I discovered that I may be crazy, but at least I wasn't alone. Then six years later, it's been shown pretty conclusively that DC was the crazy one! The more I went with what I emprically observed, and the less I listened to the group-think of DC think tanks and academics, the more prescient I started to be. When I went by what I saw rather than what I was told, I pretty much knew there were no WMD long before the Kay report. I saw a civil war on the horizon months and months before we could call it that. I greeted every turned corner with suspicion, every mission accomplished, every "desperate throes" of the enemy, as questionable. Without the added volume of the chattering class, no longer seemed very compelling. In fact, when the punditry spoke in unison, Pavlov's dog had pretty much taken over, and I had a knee-jerk distrust of it, which has served me well, so far.

My exposure to opinions expanded ten-fold. Instead of just Time magazine, I found links to publications all over the place that were of interest. I found people commenting on articles from the other side of the aisle I never would have known existed -- and I saw who held up under scrutiny. You want to know why conservatives don't hold their own awards for worst liberal blog posts, as we do? Because they usually look good in real time, and we almost always turn out to have been right in retrospect.

You want to know who has an empirical mode of inquiry? Look through the self-reinforcing archives of Marshall or Atrios, and see what they were saying, then go over and gander at Instapundit during the same period. Clearly, one side has a handle hold on reality.

That's because the left utilizes the democratic aspect of the Internet, where people from all over, with all sorts of different life experiences, hash out or pass along stuff of interst regarding a shared ideal -- say, no torture, or the need to recognize reality in Iraq. There is a danger in that, as you show, but there is a genuine back and forth.

The right generally uses blogs (typically without comments) to try to send disinformation up the food chain outside whatever standards still in place in journalism to stop them. They want to spread memes, we're trying to figure out a way to stop this runaway train. They do it to shield the believers from contrary views. We do it to find the views that are contrary to the universal megaphone. They use these outlets to create tunnel vision. We use them to expand the range of views, and to fill a void the media either can't or won't be able to fill.

For now, that has put one camp firmly on the side of empiricism and reason. Journalism IS liberal. Science IS liberal. History and academics ARE liberal. If you employ anything approaching the scientific process, rather than relying on ideaology, then you're a liberal.

That's not the way it should be. That's just the way it is. It's the very reason why you get to post here. Not because we agree with you, but because we want to put your ideas to the test, and perhaps challenge your assumptions, as you challenge ours.

Here's hoping it lasts.

No, it doesn't mean much of anything other than the fact that these two particular groups trended towards more vehemently held positions when they were with their ingroup.

"The more I went with what I emprically observed, and the less I listened to the group-think of DC think tanks and academics, the more prescient I started to be."

I'm with you on this one! I had stopped watching TV news long ago, so missed the blithering yapfest during the runup to Iraq II. When I read the NYTimes and they started to sound like a 24/7 cable channel, I started looking for news online, especially from sources outside of the US. And when the "coalition" Bu$hco managed to cook up was Britain and a couple of guys from the old Soviet block - you could figure the rationale for the invasion was crap.

There is a difference between Liberal and left wing.

Different forms of liberalism may propose very different policies, but they are generally united by their support for a number of principles, including extensive freedom of thought and speech, limitations on the power of governments, the rule of law, the free exchange of ideas, a market or mixed economy, and a transparent system of government.

It is unclear to me that self selecting to be in a box of those who agree with us is all that different than being assigned a box for an experiment if the goal is to determine the effect of not being exposing views has on ones own views.

Your premise that members will “jump from table to table” if not forced into a box negates the goal of the expreiment.

Dan, I thought the same thing. The word "extremist" in these circumstances is a very odd choice. I tend to think of extremists as people who are willing to kill, blow things up, or otherwise break the law because of their political or religious beliefs. Replace the word "extreme" with "passionate" or "firmly held" and all of a sudden the results of this study do not sound quite so shocking.

I'm not sure what, if anything, this study proves.

You say:

"the left utilizes the democratic aspect of the Internet, where people from all over, with all sorts of different life experiences, hash out or pass along stuff of interest regarding a shared ideal -- say, no torture, or the need to recognize reality in Iraq."

So the left, as you say, generates info from the bottom up... and analyzes it by working together - as is so evident at times in the Muckracker threads of tpm. Whereas the right tends to have a more top-down approach. People are more comfortable with that in their churches, in elections, from the media, from the right-wing pundits, etc.

I have a sense that many people of the left are open to new events changing their conceptualizations of things. But that novel information or the idea of people coming to their own conclusions is more threatening to right-wing individuals, across a wide spectrum of areas of their lives.

Not sure how this fits with the post we're addressing here. But these are my thoughts, sparked by the comment snippet I copied above.

It does seem as if people on the left want freedom of thought and action whereas those on the right want the "security" of being able to hold the same views, even to the point of being dogmatic about them. And security overrides everything - even to the point that they would torture someone when they feel their way of life and thought is threatened.

I'm sure this is way too simplistic, but it clearly fits the data of a fuzzy set for each side.

"Internal diversity doesn't do much for us politically. There is no justification for conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans. Our parties need to sort out into liberal and conservative and they need to be nationally based. Party affiliation ought to stand for something. But bigger roadblocks stand in the way of that happening--roadblocks like single member districts that ensure that particular localities will drive the public convictions of individual politicians."

The entire point of single member districts is to recognize that all of politics can not be broken down into narrowly defined "Liberal" and "Conservative", and that local interests deserve to be heard at all levels of government. To point out two classic examples of why two simple sides don't work, where does the socially liberal small government fiscal conservative go or the the social/moral conservative big government liberation theologist go?

In almost every group, members ended up with more extreme positions after they spoke with one another.

The problem with this whole experiment is that a favoring a global warming treaty, civil unions, and affirmative action is not "extreme". To oppose these things is conservative, but isn't extreme. To favor them is pretty much mainstream thought amongst the educated in our society.

If you want this experiement to work, try some really extreme viewpoints. Should private property be banned? Should the US surrender in Iraq and offer to pay war reparations? Should we institute wealth taxes and redistribute all wealth evenly? I can think of some good arguments in favor of these things, but I doubt I could convice many liberals because it is just too extreme for them.

Likewise, you could ask "extreme" questions of conservatives. "Should income tax be abolished?" for example.

These are issues that will bring out the "extremes".

I think your "bottom up" term is a good way to look at it, though there is some hierarchy. I go to Digby because she puts what we're all feeling better than I could. I got to Atrios because he gets me thinking about things in a way I haven't before. I go to TPM because he's doing the stories no one else will. But, Josh and Duncan are more like Dungeon Masters -- they lead the game, but the choices the players make can change the course of the game, or make the DM change the story arc.

This definitely has to do with Cass's thesis because it's another one of these, Cass is at the enlighten fulcrum, with the loonies to the left and the right of me, ignoring that there are differences. But to say so can come off overly simplistic, or lead to the kind of certainty Cass warns us against. And I share those concerns. But if there has been anything damaging our discourse, it has not been liberal stubbornness, but liberal tolerance and objectivity. Conservatives will cancel their subscription to Time if you give an opposing view. We'll subscribe to the WSJ. Eventually what happens is, to please everybody, these papers and shows skew right -- we'll give the devil his due and listen to a conservative, but they don't tick off any wingers by presenting something that challenges their worldview. Everyone's happy!

Except, not any more. At a certain point, if you want me to keep watching, you're going to have to report something that ticks off the right. As an empiricist, that puts me in an awkward position. Mainstream outlets can't do good journalism, because some facts are bad for conservatives, and they won't tolerate them. The only way to pull back and get them to report things sometimes is to threaten our subscriptions, or set up a partisan outlet so they can pretend to be there with Sustein on the fulcrum. The problem is, right now, any respectable journalism that reports the stories that matter or the situation as it is would be liberal. The facts are just that cock-eyed right now.

So, it's wrong for Cass to just lump us in the "to the left of me, and to the right of me, you're both just reinforcing your own biases, while I, stand above the fray like David Broder and Joe Klein, immune from your petty, narrow-minded politics."

The problem is -- Broder's wrong. Being in the middle doesn't change that. The universe is here, and he's way over there somewhere, doing his thing.

If I have an ideaology, it's empiricism. I'm an extreme empiricist. I think we ought to make our decisions based on good information and facts and the world as it really is, not based on who you triangulate, or whether this position is held by a particular party.

I'm neutral on most policy. I mean, climate change is one of my push-button issues, but not because I'm for Kyoto. I guess there's things I want to do, but alternative fuels and such just don't get me going. You have to choose your atrocities. For me, when gets my blood boiling is the fact that you can't find a single paper published in any peer-reviewed journal by climate scientists that questions the fact that anthropogenic warming is occurring, yet the Press, for years, has claimed some grand controversy. Evolution is perhaps the most important, central theory in biology, yet in the news, it's presented as if BIOLOGISTS doubt its validity.

Things ain't going so well in Iraq right now. Showing the "good news" may provide balance, but it's not a place you want to visit, McCain's trip to the local Bizaare not withstanding.

To have informed opinions, we have to have a reliable media interested in presenting the world as it is, not the story that sells. We need intelligence that tells us what we know, not that provides what we need to enforce the biases we already have.

All this working the ref stuff is about that -- not pushing liberal policy, but providing some counter force that makes such a needed institutional functional again. To lump us in with Michele Malkin and Instapundit may satisfy Cass's centrist prejudices, but I don't see a table discussion over at Malkin's place. In fact, I don't see all that much concern about what gets said by the right having any connection to reality at all, but whether it works.

How can a democracy function this way, when we fight for something approaching the scientific method when gathering information, and guys like Sustein lumping us in with Coulter, as some group-think, cultists? We're not. There's a danger we could be if we isolate ourselves, but I don't isolate myself by choice. What I hope for every day is that the MSM will change so that more viewpoints can be allowed to be heard. In direct contradiction to Sustein's thesis, though, blogs are the force FOR diversity of opinion. We just want any opinion, whatever it is, to be based on a similar desire for truth. Malkin isn't after truth. She's pushing propoganda. But a thesis like Cass's wants to pretend we're the same.

De Tocqueville noticed something like this in 19th Century America. While noting how much more democratic America was than his native France he also noticed then tendency to conformity at the local level. He attributed it to the leveling effect of democratic ideology. Perhaps the tendency of internet sites to really narrowcast or in the case of sites like this to lose its appeal to dissenters has created larger communities but which still resemble the socially inspired conformity that de Tocqueville noticed a century and a half ago.

Since the actual study and conclusions were not posted, it's impossible to know, by the author's writing, what type of "extremist" stances the groups held.

Support for affirmative action may not be held as extremist. But, for example, the idea of firing all Caucasians so that minorities can replace them in the workforce would definitely be an extreme position.

The concepts may not be extremist, the proposed actions for actualizing that concept may very well be extremist, though. Who knows? The study information wasn't provided. I would be very interested in reading it.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity
Where everybody knows your name...
unless you use a pseudonym

That's TWO outstanding posts by Memekiller.

Standing Eagle

Two points.

1. Unlike the groups in a room the internet is essentially unlimited. If you don't like the bent of the group you are currently engaging with you are free to go elsewhere or start your own. This, by itself, will lead to highly homogeneous and "extreme" groups. This is not any different that the situation at the turn of the 20th Century in places like NYC where there were about 100 newspapers. You found your group and read their paper.

The only question of a practical nature is do these groups have any effect on policy or electoral choices? Judging by recent elections, money still talks more than bloggers.

2. There have been studies which show that conservatives are more likely to have the type of personality called "right wing authoritarian". That is they follow a strong leader, believe in a hierarchical social structure and are reluctant to consider information beyond their dogmas.

Psychologist Robert Altemeyer has a nice, free, online book which summarizes his work in this area. His work was the basis for John Dean's recent book "Conservatives without Conscience". Altemeyer's experiments are more relevant than Milgram's in this case. Milgram shows how easy it is to get people to follow an authority. Altemeyer shows how conservativism and closed-mindedness seem to go together.

If you are interested in reading Altemeyer's book here's the link:

The Authoritarians

There have been left wing authoritarians in the past (like the old left in the 1930's) but Altemeyer couldn't find enough to study over the past 40 years. It may be that this type is reemerging as several highly partisan and intolerant "liberal" blogs seem to be gathering an audience.

Until the blogosphere demonstrates the ability to change public perception the real issue will still remain the power of the highly concentrated media. Despite the slanders of the right this is not "liberal", but in favor of their own interests which are the same as those of any other large industrial firm.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

As to whether this is the problem with political blogs/the Internet - please. You don't think politics has operated this way before?

Well, lemme play devil's advocate.

I think the question is not so much whether politics has operated this way before -- it's whether some media are especially likely to encourage certain ways of thinking, participating, etc., as compared to other media.

Is the medium the message?

Is television different from print media?  Is radio different from television?  Even if certain ways of thinking, participating, etc., are possible with all three media, does one medium lend itself more to, say, emotional responses to a news story, or community building, or critical thinking, or passive receptivity, than another?

And if the medium is the message, what is the internet's message?

Don, much respect, but I have to disagree. I will argue like crazy against people with whom I disagree (see this post and the one to which you responded), but you're deluding yourself if you think it's going to change anything.

Thank You For Smoking is a satire. So, it's bound to be a little silly. You should watch it. I hope that you will see what I mean if you do.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything, Don. What I'm trying to do is show that Sunstein's argument and book are both stupid. I understand where he's coming from and he has done some good, but this one is off the mark. For what it's worth, Sunstein wrote a book about the politicization of federal judges. It was succinctly titled "Are Judges Political?" In that book, he went about showing through very similar methodology that federal appeals panels become more radical when they are composed of judges appointed by a single party. So, three republican appointees will produce extremely conservative decisions while 2 republicans and 1 democrat will be more moderate.

I'm perfectly happy with that book. The difference is that he's talking about decision-makers with authority in a system. We ought to be concerned with actual judges who are rendering decisions that affect actual litigants and who are potentially making law that affects thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. But I don't see any reason to be concerned about the way the American citizenry is generally organizing itself, especially when the numbers are probably blown out of proportion in the first place. Look, even in this post above, Sunstein says,

It is not clear that anything should be done about the situation, and I am hardly contending that on balance, the Internet is bad for democracy.

You're a fool if you think you can argue a Republican into a Democrat, facts or not. In large part the people who actually identify with a party are doing so for personal psychological and emotional reasons. I'll argue with them because I believe that we can't simply concede ground when there's an audience. If you put me and republican in a room together with no one else around, I'd probably let it slide, though I would likely try to find out their arguments so that I could be prepared to beat them later. After all, I'm not after the republican. I'm after everyone else.

What are the effects of the Internet on democracy?

I do think this as an interesting question as it relates specifically to the internet as a medium.

But on the other hand, there seems to a prevailing narrative developing these days about the internet as The Place where people go to have their opinions reinforced... and I think that misses a lot. 

I have a pretty strong commitment to making sure I'm exposed to ideas from all over the political spectrum, and part of that comes from watching my dad -- the nascardad :-) -- become a devotee of Rush Limbaugh in the 80s, and then all the self-reinforcing media that followed from that. 

And my dad doesn't do e-mail, much less blogs.

Political conversations with him were never easy, but as he became more immersed in exclusively right wing media, they became nearly impossible -- not only because of the anger he brought to the conversation, but because the actual set of "facts" he was working with was different from mine. 

This is a huge generalization, but... my impression is that a lot of the extreeemely polarizing right wing media that has been in existence for decades now has kind of flown under the radar of many of the educated liberal types who I tend to hang out with.  They think of it as something that no one could possibly take seriously, mebbe?  That everyone watches/listens to it with the same kind of ironic distance that they bring to it...

But the audiences for Limbaugh and O'Reilly et al. are overwhelmingly conservative.  Of course a conservative could listen to Limbaugh with ironic distance, just as a liberal could read, I dunno, a radical diary on Daily Kos with ironic distance... but Limbaugh and O'Reilly  and Daily Kos did not become phenomenons because people held them at arms length.  They became phenomenons because they galvanized communities of real people with a passion for politics.

Perhaps with the internet there are communities around that "educated liberal types" have a greater investment in, that they're more exposed to in their own circles, etc... and so group think tendencies in that context seem much more real and worrisome to them.

But polarized media has existed since there has been media.  And I think the most dramatic surge of polarizing media in my lifetime began with right wing talk radio... even if it was outside the purview of some of us who weren't part of the target audience.

WTF. Sounds like your mama spent too muvh money sending you to graduate school.

If I am in a mob of racists, it is much more likely that I will burn a cross or lynch a black man than if I am by myself. I don't think there is much debate about that.

Many here have already raised several very good and important points regarding this experiment. I thought this sort of group think phenomenon was generally accepted and understood. But I was a bit confused by the opening statement -

What are the effects of the Internet on democracy? The answer depends, of course, on how people use the Internet. But let's begin with a possible clue, coming from a small experiment in democracy, held in Colorado in 2005.

Is this suggesting that the internet promotes or hinders this behavior? It was my impression that it might be suggesting that it promotes it. If that is indeed the case then I would disagree.

I for one think that the internet causes such group think to break down at a certain point (although it definitely does not eliminate it). The obvious difference (as mention several times by others here) between the internet and this experiment is anonymity. This is an extremely important difference. But for me probably the most significant difference is information. Group think and extremism flourish when information is limited or scarce. In a vacuum of information it is much easier for one idea or voice to dominate. A room of 5 or 6 people (even if there are ten of them) seems to put a cap on the amount of information available to fuel any of the discussions. Thus this experiment all but ensures a more extreme result.

The internet provides near endless amounts of information at one's fingertips. There's also a general level of fact demanded by those who exchange or promote their ideas and opinions online. More facts are demanded and links to those facts are usually expected. In the end I think if there is one thing that may actually save our democracy then the internet may very well be it.

Ignorance is usually at the root of most human failures. A big contributor to racisms continued existence for example is ignorance. In essence it is the result of 5 or 6 people rooms (with all of those people being of the same race) making up their minds about another race. This occurs without any information other than that brought into the room by those 5 or 6 people. The key to overcoming it is to get a greater number of more diverse people into the room and to eliminate ignorance from the equation. The internet seems to provide just such an opportunity.

We learn from the experiment that a group of people will come to consensus. That's basically positive, in a political context, that people can arrive at a common position.

Then we have the fear that the Internet will produce isolated groups with "extreme" ideas. As an aside, your extremity may be my diversity. But the more pertinent point is: Most people on the blogs and so on aren't just members of a single group, but of many overlapping groups, so there ends up being no single consensus - extreme or otherwise - except in the exceptional case of those who visit only a small handful of low-traffic blogs of no diversity, who have no personal lives either.

Even in the academic study you're citing, was there a followup on whether these groups still held their consensus positions after the people involved had been back on their own, in their normal social circles, for a few weeks?

If there's no problem and nothing should be done, it is really, really uninteresting to talk about it.

Well it is interesting. It confirms something that I noticed in meeting dynamics many years ago and it is something that I use when attempting to sway a meeting in my direction. I wasn't aware that this was a widely recognized phenomena.

He was according to the Pharisees.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity
Where everybody knows your name...
unless you use a pseudonym

So I guess my next question would be "how much debate makes something 'controversial'?"

5% of the population up in arms? 10%? 30%?

I have a mild interest in a school bond issue, and as a liberal person who supports public schools generally, I am inclined to support it. Professor Sunstein puts me in a group with several other liberals, some of whom know a lot about the issue, and they give me facts and arguments that solidify my position, which is now further away from the conservative position, which is that there should be no new taxes because the government mishandles public money. Have I drifted toward extremism?

Or, I am a conservative in the mid-1990s. I think President Clinton is a bad guy who I'll vote against given the chance. Professor Sunstein puts me in a group with some Montana Freemen tax protestors who believe that Clinton is secretly handing over domestic power to the United Nations, which plans to use its secret force of black helicopter commandos to take all our guns. They believe that the only possible response is to begin laying in arms and supplies to survive the coming apocalypse, and that any federal officers who try to stop them should be shot. I think this is stupid. Have I drifted toward the Democrats?

I think Professor Sunstein should think about what he means by "extremism" before he writes his next post.

I think the definition of "extremism" as Mr. Sunstein is using it is the crux of the issue. I haven't read Democracy.com or any of his other writings (like the judge study) about like pushing like further in its own predisposed direction, but I would appreciate if in his next post he state explicitly just what it is about the outcome he is describing that he perceives to be undesirable, and why, as well as what it is about the experiment that he finds specifically analogous to, and therefore meaningful in understanding, the Internet.

Until then, I'll go with my initial reaction -- frankly, who the hell cares?

I think the Professor's summation would have been more effective (and less controversial) if he had omitted the value judgment-charged descriptions of "controversial" and "extreme".

It's pretty clear to me, at least, that Professor Sunstein is simply talking about the effects of groupthink - about which every business and poli-sci major learns.

What I find interesting, and am looking forward to reading about, is the idea that a group moves to a certain outlying direction within the frame of the topic. I would have figured, based on nothing but personal experience and my smattering of statistical knowledge, that the group would come to consensus based on a bell-curve of moderation within the positions of the members, and not based on the topic itself.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity
Where everybody knows your name...
unless you use a pseudonym

Although I find the idea of the study fascinating, I believe Prof Sunstein used a rather inadequate example to show the type of behavior he describes to in the opening paragraph.

Unless, he will be using our responses to make some kind of point... one can never be sure with these professorial types. :) 

~~~~~~~~~~~

Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity
Where everybody knows your name...
unless you use a pseudonym

You claim these issues are controversial.

I think you could look at it this way: they were issues that the two groups disagreed on.

The positions described here aren't, for example, just a tendency to coalesce around support for civil unions.  It's stronger support for civil unions in the liberal group, and stronger opposition to civil unions in the conservative group.

"Extremism" isn't the best word for this, I agree, 'cause in this context it carries negative connotations about the "political extremist's" policy preferences.  Which, well, that depends on the policies... 

But they are "extremes" in the sense that on a graded scale from, say, Very Opposed to Very Supportive, the two groups moved further toward the ends of the scale.

The potential negative underlying this stuff is I think just the notion that living in an ideological bubble = bad.  Since our ideas are influenced by the perspectives that we're exposed to, it's better to be exposed to a wide range than to a limited range.  (Doesn't mean we have to wind up somewhere in the middle of all the perspectives, or spend all our time with people we disagree with, but yeah, it's good for ideas to encounter lots of different kinds of challenges.)

It would be interesting to know what happened in the study when (if?) the the liberal and conservative groups talked to each other.

The word "extremist" here is extremely important to Mr. Sunstein's thesis, which can be boiled down to "Beltway intelligentsia* good, DFH's bad".

*His oxymoron, not mine.

And Pontius Pilate.

Who was really annoyed with him for not trying to reach a consensus. Couldn't he just drive halfthe money changers out of the temple ?

And that Socrates. Another extremist. Not to mention Ghandi.Mother Teresa was pretty far out too but fortunately Christopher Hitchens was able to get on her case when not busy acting as a cheer leader for the War.

But it is clear that self-sorting, into groups of like-minded types, will often produce greater extremism -- and much reduce internal diversity.

Writing as someone who has been banned from Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, Roger L Simon, Newsbusters and other right-wing sites, I suggest that conservatives are terrified of dissent.

I would also say "Yes", but the rest of your analysis is backwards.

The "beltway" constantly talks to a set of hardcore extremist rightwingers, and so they constantly get pulled further and further to the right under the guise of "consensus".

Whenever most Congress members go *home* and spend time talking to their *constituents* for a long period, they get pulled to the left. (Exceptions: the few areas of the country which really are seriously right-wing.)

The left-wing "base", on the other hand, spends most of its time exposed to many, many differing opinions and rarely if ever comes to consensus.

Don't mourn, organize ~ Joe Hill

I think this goes to my comments about the anecdotal rather than scientific nature of this "experiment". Since there are no statistical or linguistic outliers given or terms defined, it's hard to define or quantify the use of the word, "extreme", and hence, the ensuing confusion and disagreement.

You are obviously making up a narrative to fit your world view.

I think almost every one agrees that the bases of both parties are more extreme than the general electorate. The beltway is where both parties come together to try to outflank each other while pushing policy incrementally in their direction. This requires compromise that moderates extreme positions.

I maintain that the base of the political parties are more extreme precisely because they have self selected to associate with those who agree with them and ignore opposing views.

Do you really think that the left wing base has not come to consensus on global warming, abortion, gun control, homosexual marriage, income redistribution, free markets, free trade, ect, ect.?

Sort of like that letter Grover Norquist sent to the governor of Minnesota threatening the governor's entire future in Republican politics if he supported a tax increase to fix bridges. We all know that Norquist sits at the extreme of the Republican party.

Oh wait - Norquist has sat at the center of the spider's web for at least 10 years and at one point directed at least a billion dollars a year in soft money. Hmmm..

sPh

Yes, Norquist is an excellent example of my premise.

He is part of the Republican base and he holds extreme views compared to the total electorate. His views are moderated within the beltway to the chagrin of those who advocate for lower taxes and smaller government.

The party base is the most active and thus they are the ones raising money and writing the threatening letters. Don’t confuse that with effectiveness with the beltway.