khaosworks | Preaching to the converted

Trapped in the echo chamber
The Internet makes it easy to find people we agree with. After Election Day 2004, maybe it's time to kick that habit.
By Andrew Leonard

Nov. 3, 2004 | As I survey the wreckage of the lefty blogosphere Wednesday morning, it is easy to wonder: How could I, how could we, have been so wrong? How could the confidence and jubilation generated by the thriving communities at blogs like Atrios' Eschaton and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga's Daily Kos so thoroughly have evaporated into self-recrimination and despair? (To be sure, there have also been eloquent calls to arms.)

Like many a left-winger with broadband access, I've spent quite a bit of time in the past six months at such sites. I learned a lot about this country by doing so -- there's no better way to get quickly to the nitty-gritty of local politics and candidates all across the country than hearing from citizens involved. As a journalist, I've gotten scads of tips from the awesomely efficient early-warning system created by thousands of people coming together online. I enjoyed following the commentary on such sites during the presidential debates almost as much as I enjoyed watching John Kerry win them. And there's no question that the lefty blogosphere proved to be an effective fundraising mechanism.

But I feel now much like a kid who ate too much Halloween candy -- there's a taste in my mouth that tells me I overdosed. I fell victim to one of the Internet's most seductive illusions: the false reassurance of the echo chamber.

Early this year, as part of the Howard Dean campaign's postmortem, David Weinberger wrote a piece in Salon criticizing the argument that the Internet facilitates echo chambers. Echo chambers, so the argument goes, are places where like-minded people talk to one another, nobody ever changes anyone else's mind and true diversity of opinion is exchanged for an infinite plenitude of ideologically identical communities. The Internet, say critics, is really, really good at providing logistical support for such places.

Weinberger's central point is that there are good reasons to have gathering places for like-minded individuals, one of which is that people who agree on founding principles can then move on to discuss more subtle nuances that are themselves diverse -- a bunch of Kerry supporters thrashing out get-out-the-vote strategies, for example.

That's all well and good, but the problem with the argument, I think, is that it underplays how easy it is to let an Internet site of like-mindedness form a nice, soft cocoon of intellectual safety around one's head. For weeks, I've gotten up in the morning, made my coffee and then armed myself for the day with arguments and anecdotes, spin and rhetoric often in large part derived from the thrust-and-parry of discourse in the lefty blogosphere. When I visited the right-wing blogosphere, it was like going to the zoo to look at exotic animals. Sometimes I admired the quality of its spin, too, but I dismissed it, secure in the armor provided by the communities of people who shared my values.

We all do this in the course of our normal daily existence, with or without the Internet. It's part of how we survive as human beings. Even as I look with dismay at the reality of Republican gains in the Senate and the House, and the likely remaking of the Supreme Court to reflect values that I don't share for a generation to come, I take heart that there are some 55 million people in this country who do agree with me on some fundamental issues. What I find disturbing, however, is how easy the Internet has made it not just to Google the fact that I need when I need it, but to get the mind-set I want when I want it.

I really think I need to get out more, now. Perhaps if I'd spent less time at Daily Kos and more time talking to people who live in Alabama I'd have been less surprised by the election results. And perhaps I'd be better prepared to deal with them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mrdankelly.livejournal.com

Having actually worked with the working class during my life, I can tell him the conversations would have revolved around TV shows, cars, and pussy. He would have overheard a lot of talk about how child molesters are everywhere and that there was a fucking great new sports bar off the highway.

Why are liberals so fucking out of touch and into this asinine and conterproductive self-flogging? The Internet allowed us to mobilize, organize, and fund plenty of Dem organizations. In fact, it encouraged hundreds of folks to get off their butts and leave their keybaords to knock on doors three states over.

If this guy feels he didn't do enough, he probably didn't. He shouldn't tack the blame on the Internet. Consider instead how, without the Internet, the Right has created a nationwide echo chamber that puts ours to shame.

From:

khaosworks.livejournal.com

There's been a lot of self-flaggelation on the part of the left these past couple of days. There will be more. There are those who blame gay marriage. Blame Kerry. Blame the internet. It's the usual grieving process.

I chose this one because that he actually is circling around the correct point - the internet has helped amplify the political discourse in this country over the last decade and is only set to increase. To a certain extent, he's correct, the left surrounded itself with an echo chamber and got sucker punched by the Right, who were sneaking around while the rest of us were ranting and being self-congratulatory.

The solution is not to blame or abandon the net but to see it for what it is - an interactive broadcasting instrument that can create discourse. However, this time around the left just used it to raise funds, not political consciousness, which was the mistake. Knowing now that we are in the minority, we should use the net to make inroads into the majority's sphere and engage them directly.

From:

billroper

I think you're right about him being onto something.

Most of my friends are more liberal politically than I am. Now, frequently I discover that we disagree more on the means than the ends (not always), but it's important to have the discussions and understand why it is that they believe what they do. It makes me think, which is a good thing.

Before the election, I spent a fair amount of time reading right-wing or libertarian websites such as National Review, Instapundit, Captain's Quarters and the like. I found that I didn't always agree with them, but it was useful to remind myself that there were people on the right as well as on the left.

(And those are a reasonably sane bunch. I'm sure I could find some real wingnuts if I worked at it, but it wouldn't improve my life. :) )

From:

scs-11.livejournal.com

The word he's looking for is 'groupthink', and yes, the Internet (or any other medium that permits like types to meet while filtering out unlike types) does facilitate it.

From: (Anonymous)

"The word he's looking for is 'groupthink', and yes, the Internet (or any other medium that permits like types to meet while filtering out unlike types) does facilitate it."

Yes, if you *want* to have blinders on, the Internet certainly enables that. But do people in general only choose to see what they want to?

Thankfully, Pew has just done a study that can be found here (http://pewtrusts.com/pdf/Pew_Internet_political_info_report_1004.pdf) which suggests the answer to that is no. Or to put it a bit more accurately, people who use the Internet are exposed to more arguments from the opposite political spectrum than people who don't use the Internet.

I'm extremely conservative, for example. In the non-Internet world, the cost of being exposed to far left arguments is relatively high. Do I really want to add a subscription to Z Magazine or The Nation to go along with the Weekly Standard and National Review? The costs get higher when we start talking books -- who has time to read all of the political books that are influencing those on the right and left these days? The first thing i wanted to see after Bush's win was just how bad the folks at The Nation were taking it, and that took about two seconds to bring up in my browser.

On the Internet I can visit half a dozen sites very quickly and find out what those on the left are thinking, and vice versa. Plus the low costs allow people who are ideological opponents to freely quote from and essentially redistribute each others' arguments. In fact,I think an argument could be made that you really have to go out of your way to maintain those ideological blinders.

There was a book a few years ago, for example, that proposed regulation to solve this problem. The claim was that a website that was pro-gun, for example, would likely contain only pro-gun arguments and propaganda, and so people visiting such a site would only be exposed to one side of the argument. But the reality is that most pro- and anti- gun sites quote from and repeat the arguments of the other side ad nauseum as part of their own efforts.

Now if we could just get people to use some basic critical thinking skills while they're sifting through this glut of information, we might be getting somewhere.

From:

khaosworks.livejournal.com

I'm not disagreeing with you in the essentials, but just a few notes:

The numbers in the Pew survey are interesting because they show, for example, that while 35% of respondents with positions on gay marriage had received internet information (e-mail, etc.) about the issue, the arguments against it were more frequent than the arguments for it (p. vi). In other words, in particular issues, there seems to be a skew towards a specific side of the argument.

The numbers also show, however, that despite the exposure, those who are supporters of a particular candidate tend to be less likely than average to hear about arguments for the opposing candidate (pp. 13-14). This is not to say that they don't hear favorable arguments at all, but that the information they get also is skewed. This works for both sides, by the way, just to be clear - so here you have the echo chamber effect.

So basically, it's not that partisans are unaware of opposing arguments - and I agree that the internet exposes more people to more arguments - but that their exposure is still biased towards the partisan. In addition, and the Pew survey emphasizes this: this exposure to opposing points of view doesn't mean they absorb it.

My opinion is that, in fact, the existence of this skew reinforces the siege mentality that partisans often feel, and as a result dulls the impact that exposure has on their thinking... which is not good intellectually, whichever side you're on.

But that's not the Internet's fault. It's an instrument - and therefore it can be used well, or used badly, consciously or not. That was my basic point earlier, that the Internet needs to be seized and not discarded. But to say that the Internet allows exposure, doesn't meant here it can't facilitate an echo chamber or groupthink effect, and the Pew study does not conclusively disprove the existence of such an effect. It merely suggests, and rightly so, that insularity is not a product of being online.

The thing about pro- and anti-gun sites, to use your example, is they they quote the other's arguments as a means to shoot them down. But how many of the people who read pro-gun sites also read anti-gun sites? To put it another way, the opposing arguments they read are refuted and dismissed, but how often do they read about the weaknesses in their own arguments?

Critical thinking is always the key, and in this we are in full accord.