The Great Diversity-Participation Tradeoff

Hi Glenn! You raise a number of good points and questions, and I'd like to approach our large topic by focussing on your last paragraph and especially your last sentence.

My speculation is this: To the extent that people are using the blogosphere to congregate in groups of like-minded types, they are more likely to be politically active. To the extent that people are hearing lots of different points of view, they are more likely to sit on the sidelines. In short, there is, for many people, a tradeoff between a) exposure to diverse views and b) political participation.

Intuition helps explain the possibility of such a tradeoff. Like-minded people, talking only with each other, get more confident and more extreme. (This is the concern of Republic.com 2.0.) If people are living or communicating in echo chambers, there will ultimately be a kind of Babel effect, in which different groups won't quite understand each other. (Cf. the debate over climate change.)

The bad side of all this includes greater extremism, more anger, and less understanding of one's fellow citizens. The good side is that if you are confident and charged up, you're more likely to be active.

So much for intuition. Diana Mutz' superb 2006 book, Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative Versus Participatory Democracy, offers a lot of evidence, and is full of implications for the blogosphere. If you deliberate with a wide range of people, you are less likely to be engaged in politics (apparently because you conclude that different views are reasonable, and it might not be worth spending your time fighting). If you talk with people who agree with you, you are more likely to get involved. (I bet that Mark Penn knows this; I'm sure that Karl Rove does. Cf. the success of conservative and liberal groups on law school campuses.)

On the blogosphere, some people operate as polarization entrepreneurs. They attempt to create enclaves of like-minded types, intensifying their antecedent convictions. (I won't name names.) The Army of Davids includes a lot of people who have been energized by polarization enterpreneurs -- and as a result, their judgments may have been badly distorted. But it is worth emphasizing that the same processes that create the distortions help to fuel the participation.

As Mutz emphasizes, this benefit is puchased at a cost: Those who have been polarized are not likely to be tolerant of others, or even comprehending, and they might well fail to persuade those who tend to disagree with them. My main point is that to the extent that the blogosphere helps to create information cocoons, it does indeed energize people.

There are obvious questions here about the complex role of two virtues: respect and charity. Any thoughts on any of this? Do we have any disagreements thus far?

Comments

[Joan A. Conway]

Personally this consideration given to difference of opinion sold much better 50 to 60 years ago then it does now.

I just saw "In the valley of Elah" starring Tommy Lee Jones about his son's murder by [I can't give the plot away.]

Most Americans are employed by corporations, and no longer have a sole proprietorship or partnership as their job.

With a loss of independence comes corruption, since the Chief Executive Officers are looking to increase profit usually by unjust means to meet Wall Street's expectations, recall 'Enron' wanting to hire someone who would steal and cheat for them.

In other words to get the best deal for the employer with little regards as to its impact of a short period of time on the country and the economy.

Fifty to Sixty years ago, many would cry "Up the Organization" but today no one wimpers about the loss of their independence. They are too busy screwing the next guy or gal to get ahead. They are totally competitive!

Their minds have been altered and they are much more shallow, because of this unfortunate process. They have become slaves instead of subordinates to the corporate will.

Therefore full participation into a society without other employment opportunities is inherently biased toward social engineering at its worst.

David should never been allowed to fight Goliath; he was underage and there are rules of warfare to be followed. If you change the rules of warfare to the advantage of one-side, can you have full participation in any democracy, since there is no democracy anyway. Hence Carlos Slims billions!

[Sue]

What is the question/s?

[Erasmussimo]

I like the point that diversity is inversely correlated with participation, and I'd like to add that diversity seems to be diminishing. I have spent a lot of time participating in discussions on blogs representing conservative views, and I have never gotten the impression that I can reason with these people. Like Diogenes, I wander the Web in search of an open, honest conservative discussion blog and I have failed to find any such thing. Every single one I have found is primarily a cheerleading site, where people reinforce each other's beliefs. There are degrees of intellectual intolerance, but the general tendency I see on the right is towards intolerance of dissent. On the left, there is less intolerance and more discussion. Perhaps the best simple metric is the length of posts by individuals. I'd like to hear other people's observations, but in the left-wing blogs I have seen, posts by individuals include longer analyses with links to evidence, while the right-wing posts tend towards one-liners. Can anybody offer their observations on this?

I realize, of course, that I come out sounding awfully partisan here. Perhaps if somebody would like to direct me to a right-wing discussion blog where there really is serious discussion of issues, they can both prove me wrong and end my search -- everybody wins!

But I have found very few discussion blogs where there's any serious disagreement. This blog has a great deal of polarized disagreement, and it seems quite impossible that any of the partisans here (myself included) will ever be convinced by any point made by any commentator of opposing partisanship. So much more's the shame.

Returning to my main point -- that diversity is decreasing -- the corresponding consequence is that participation (at least on blog discussions) is much increased. If this translates into political action, then woe to our Republic! The last thing we need is increased polarization in our body politic.

[geoff]

Can anybody offer their observations on this?

As a frequenter of conservative blogs, I can only say that my experience has been as unsatisfactory as yours, but not for the same reasons. Perhaps 3 years ago there was room for honest discussion, but that potential has been destroyed by trolls from both sides. Based on the overwhelming history of trolls visiting opposition blogs just to stir up trouble, the knee-jerk response from both sides is ridicule and banning. The longevity of a conservative comment at Daily Kos, for instance, is about 60 seconds. And that's probably 59 seconds too long at least 90% of the time.

My personal suspicion is that the more responsible members of both sides tend to stay at home, just to avoid the pointless squabbling that results from visits abroad. It's also worth noting that the two sides have moved so far apart that finding common ground for discussion has become very difficult. Both parties come to the table with an enormous ideological framework that divides them to the point that they can barely communicate with one another. On the issue of diversity, for example, the Left continues to refine and promote the concept, while the Right considers it pandering claptrap. Not much room for fruitful discussion.

As to the quality of blog content, I think partisan perspectives color our assessment. Suffice to say that there are many, many conservative blogs that offer analysis and evidence. None of them are interested in cultivating or even entertaining a liberal audience, mostly because that well was poisoned long ago.

[Yong ZHAO]

I agree with that the discussion or deliberation in the blogosphere or the Internet may drive people become more extreme.Of course, it will must be that by given the premise or situation that the participants cannot see each other. The expression upon some words without any visual element concluded, you cannot hold the expectation in its effects as that of face to face discussion. The problem here is if we see the discussion or deliberation as a process of transmitting information from a certainty party, which is very essential to the effects of discussion or deliberation, when we go into that process through here in the blogosphere or internet, it may not works as well as in a face to face discussion. The function of that process is extremely limited by the way conduct that discussion.

And another possible reason for energizing people or making them more extreme may be the lack of "real common concern". "Common concern" provide a basic premise for people to go into one discussion.In a democracy participation, for example, the presidential election, the effects of your expression or behaviors may determine your interests in the future. From my observation of a Democracy Deliberation program conducting in a township of China, I think only when these who participate in the process influence the result of the activity they will try to understand each other and make an agreement .Namely, they should benefit form their participation. This constitute the base for them to understand mutually, not become more extrem.